Acid drops

Acid drops have an alarming name, but an honest one. They are old fashioned boiled sweets made deliberately sharp with acid.

What an acid drop is

An acid drop is an old fashioned boiled sweet containing citric acid or tartaric acid. The acid gives the sweet its sharp, sour taste, and acid drops are often coated in sour sanding as well. The name was in use by 1930, when an acid drop turns up in Norman Lindsay's novel Redheap.

The acids in acid drops

The acids used in sweets are food acids. Citric acid occurs naturally in citrus fruits and is especially concentrated in lemons and limes, and tartaric acid is found naturally in many fruits, most notably grapes. The sour dusting on many sharp sweets is called sour sanding, or sour sugar: sugar mixed with citric acid, tartaric acid and malic acid. It is used to coat sour sweets and to make hard sweets taste tart.

How they are made

Like other boiled sweets, acid drops are made by boiling sugar to a high temperature so that it sets hard and glassy when it cools. English confectioners learned that adding acid to boiled sugar stops it from crystallising, so the sweets stay clear and hard. It is the same trick used in lemon drops: see lemon drops. For more on the process, see how are boiled sweets made?

A name that caught on

The sweet's name has been borrowed more than once. The comedian Kenneth Williams used it as the title of a book, Acid Drops, and there was also a play of that name by Gertrude Jennings.

The sour family

Acid drops belong to a whole family of sharp, fruity boiled sweets in the traditional British sweet shop. Pear drops have their pear drop smell, sherbet lemons hide a fizzy centre, and lemon drops are rolled in sugar. See pear drops and sherbet lemons, both of which we sell in our pick and mix.

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