Mint Drops
1 pound pulverized sugar. 1 heaping teaspoonful powdered gum arabic. 5 tablespoonfuls water. 1 tablespoonful essence peppermint. Put the water on in a small saucepan or cup and the gum in it and let warm up. When the gum is dissolved put about a quarter of the sugar in, let boil up and then add half the sugar that remains putting it in gradually without stirring. When it boils again take it to the table and stir in the remaining sugar and after that the flavoring. Drop portions the size of quarter dollars on sheets of paper. They slip of the paper when cold. It may be necessary to add another tablespoonful or two of sugar to give the drops consistency enough not to run on the paper, yet it is better to be too thin than too much the other way.
An uncooked-fondant style mint, thickened with gum arabic rather than boiled to a sugar stage. The whole thing hinges on working fast once the sugar goes in.
- Work hot and quicklyThe mixture stiffens as it cools, and once it does it cannot be dropped smoothly. Have the paper laid out and a spoon or piping bag ready before the last of the sugar goes in, and keep the pan over the barest heat if it thickens mid-job.
- Pulverized sugarThis means sugar ground fine, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar in a modern box. Either works here; modern 10X will set slightly softer and taste faintly starchy. A pound is about 3 1/2 to 4 cups.
- Gum arabicStill sold, usually as acacia gum powder, in baking and cake-decorating suppliers. A heaping teaspoon is roughly 5 g. It is a binder and glossing agent, not a flavor, and it dissolves slowly, so give the warm water a few minutes and stir until no grains remain.
- Essence of peppermintA tablespoon of modern peppermint extract is aggressive by current standards but not out of range for a mint drop. Start with two teaspoons, taste the warm mixture, and add more. If you use peppermint oil rather than extract, use a quarter teaspoon or less.
- Don't stir while it boilsThe instruction to add sugar without stirring is deliberate: agitating a hot sugar syrup encourages coarse crystals and a gritty drop. Stirring comes only at the end, off the heat, when the remaining sugar and the flavoring go in.
- ConsistencyThe advice to err thin is sound. Too stiff and the drops sit up in lumps with tails; slightly thin gives flat, glossy rounds that spread a little and firm up as they dry.
- PaperPlain kitchen paper works as written, but parchment is more reliable for release. Let the drops dry uncovered at room temperature for several hours, not in the refrigerator, where they will weep.
- Size and yieldA quarter dollar is about an inch across. The yield depends entirely on how thickly the drops are laid down, so count on a large batch rather than a fixed number. Stored airtight between layers of paper, they keep for weeks.
Mint drops of this kind sit on the line between the confectioner's bench and the apothecary's counter. Gum arabic — the dried sap of acacia trees, imported through Egypt and the Sudan and long a staple of both trades — was the standard binder for lozenges and pastilles well before it was a candy ingredient, and peppermint lozenges were sold as digestives as much as sweets throughout the nineteenth century. This version requires no thermometer and no sugar boiling to a stage. The practice of dropping candy onto plain paper and letting it release itself when cold, rather than greasing or dusting a surface, is often said to be characteristic of the period's confectionery instructions.