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Dessert

Peppermint Drops

A hard candy made from sugar, water, and peppermint oil or essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and peppermint are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,082 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Peppermint Drops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil sugar and water for 5 minutes after boiling begins.

  2. Add oil of peppermint or essence and remove from heat.

Shape and set

  1. Stir rapidly until the mixture turns whitish.

  2. Quickly pour into greased or oiled patty pan moulds.

  3. Let the drops harden before serving.

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 + pepperminttop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,082 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the hard, glassy candy base as it cooks and cools.
Water
Dissolves the sugar so it can be boiled evenly into syrup.
Oil of peppermint
Gives the candy its strong peppermint aroma and flavor.

The step that matters

Stir rapidly until the mixture turns whitish. Stirring after removing from heat lets sugar crystallize and turn the mixture opaque, which lets it set into firm drops. The pour must follow quickly, before the mixture hardens in the pot.

“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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