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Dessert

Lemon and Acid Drops

A hard candy made from sugar, water, cream of tartar, lemon essence, and tartaric acid.

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 ↓

Lemon and Acid Drops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sugar base

  1. Boil the sugar, water, and cream of tartar until the mixture turns pale yellow.

  2. Add essence of lemon to taste and pour the mixture onto an oiled slab.

Shape and finish

  1. Sprinkle the tartaric acid over the mixture and work it in well.

  2. Once cool enough to handle, form into thin rolls and cut short pieces with scissors.

  3. Roll the pieces under your hand and coat with sifted sugar.

  4. Dry well and store in an airtight container.

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

Loaf sugar
Forms the sweet, glassy body of the drop as it sets.
Cream of tartar
Helps prevent sugar crystallising, keeping the candy smooth and clear.
Tartaric acid
Adds a sharp sour tang that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Working the tartaric acid in while the mixture is still soft. Sugar boiled to this stage sets quickly as it cools. The acid must be worked in evenly before it firms, or pockets of sour acid and uneven texture will result.

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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