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Dessert

Sour or Lemon Drops

A hard candy made from sugar, tartaric acid, and lemon oil, shaped into drops.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Sour or Lemon Drops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the candy

  1. Combine sugar and cream of tartar in a large pot.

  2. Cook over medium heat until it reaches hard crack stage.

  3. Pour the mixture onto a slab.

  4. Once the edges are turned in, sprinkle tartaric acid over the batch.

  5. Add enough oil of lemon to flavor the mixture. Mix thoroughly.

Shape the drops

  1. When the mixture is cool enough, use a drop machine to shape the drops.

  2. If you don't have a machine, cut strips from the batch using shears, about the size of your little finger.

  3. Run a caramel cutter over the strips to cut them nearly through.

  4. Push them to the back of the slab and repeat until finished.

  5. Work quickly to keep the batch warm and minimize handling for a clear finish.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Cream + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the hard candy base that sets clear and crisp as it cools.
Cream of tartar
Acid that helps keep the sugar smooth and prevents crystallization.
Tartaric acid
Adds the sharp sour taste that gives the candy its tang.

The step that matters

Adding the tartaric acid. Sour acid added to very hot sugar can cause it to inverts and turn sticky or cloudy if the batch is overworked or too warm. Sprinkling it once the edges have turned in and working quickly keeps the candy clear and evenly flavored.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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