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Dessert

Cinnamon Drops or Sweetmeats

Cinnamon drops are small, sweet confections made from cinnamon, sugar, water, and egg whites, dropped onto paper and dried or baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cinnamon Drops or Sweetmeats

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pound the cinnamon in a mortar and sift it through a fine sieve.

  2. Mix the cinnamon with the sugar, water, and whisked egg whites.

Shape and dry

  1. Using a teaspoon, drop the mixture onto stiff, white writing paper.

  2. Dry or bake in a very cool oven until cold, then they will come off easily.

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. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Cinnamon + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Cinnamon
Supplies the main flavour and aroma of the drops.
Pounded loaf sugar
Sweetens the drops and sets to a firm, crisp texture as they dry.
Egg whites
Whisked to a froth, they add airy structure that helps the drops hold their shape.

The step that matters

Drying in a very cool oven. Gentle, low heat slowly dries the sugar and egg-white mixture into a firm set without browning, so the drops release cleanly from the paper. Too much heat can brown or stick them.

“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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