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Dessert

Iceland Moss Drops

A hard candy made from Iceland moss, sugar, cream of tartar, liquid carmine, and oil of anise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Iceland Moss Drops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the Iceland moss as you would hoar-hound.

Make the candy

  1. In a pot, combine the moss, sugar, and enough water to dissolve.

  2. Add the cream of tartar and cook until it reaches a hard crack stage.

  3. Stir in liquid carmine until you achieve a deep red color.

  4. Once at hard crack, add oil of anise for flavor.

Cool and set

  1. Remove from heat, shake the pan gently, and pour onto a slab to cool.

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. Cream + anisetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Sugar + anisetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together328 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the sweet, glassy candy body as it cooks to hard crack.
Cream of tartar
Acid that helps keep the sugar smooth and stops it from crystallizing.
Iceland moss
Adds body and a thickening, gel-like texture to the candy.

The step that matters

Cooking to hard crack stage. Sugar must reach the hard crack temperature range to set into a firm, brittle drop. Stopping early leaves the candy soft and sticky, while overcooking darkens and bitters the sugar.

Swap the anise

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Anisethe original
  4. Gingerfits about as well

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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