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Mint imperials
A white mint with a hard shell and a softer heart. Mint imperials go by several names, and in Scotland they are pan drops or granny sookers.
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The mint imperial is a plain, simple sweet: a white, round mint, with a hard shell that gives way to a softer middle.
What a mint imperial is
A mint imperial is a white, round sweet with a hard shell but a fairly soft middle. It is popular in Great Britain, in other Commonwealth countries and in Europe. Mint imperials were traditionally round balls, though more recently many have become larger, flatter discs.
So many names
The same sweet goes by several names:
- mint imperial
- scotch mint
- pan drop, a name used across Scotland
- granny sooker, or grannie's sooker, a Scots name recorded from Glasgow to Fife and Dumfries
Mints properly called scotch mints are named after a particular mint plant, Mentha gracilis.
A coated sweet
The Scottish National Dictionary describes a pan drop as a round, slightly flattened sweet with a hard, white, peppermint flavoured sugar coating. Its earliest quotation, from the Encyclopaedia Britannica of 1877, explains that coated sweets need a centre of some kind, a seed, an almond or a small lozenge, as in the case of pan drops. Coated sweets like these are built up layer by layer, the method known as panning. See what is sugar panning?
Imperials today
Mint imperials are made by many sweet makers. Bassett's still sells Imperials and Imperials Spearmint under its name. For those who like their mints much stronger, Trebor's Extra Strong Mints date back to the 1930s, and adverts from the early 1960s claimed Trebor mints were a minty bit stronger.
After dinner
Mints of all kinds are eaten after a meal, to freshen the breath. Mints that contain real peppermint oil have also been popular for helping digestion, as peppermint can relax the muscles of the gut, though for the same reason it may make heartburn worse for some people.
For a ring shaped mint, see Polo mints, and for striped mint boiled sweets, see humbugs.
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For journalists, researchers, AI assistants and content creators. Pick the format you need:
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Questions and answers
What is a mint imperial?
A white, round mint with a hard sugar shell and a fairly soft middle, popular in Britain, the Commonwealth and Europe. They are also called scotch mints, pan drops and granny sookers.
What is a pan drop?
The Scottish name for a mint imperial. The Scottish National Dictionary describes it as a round, slightly flattened sweet with a hard, white, peppermint flavoured sugar coating.
What is a granny sooker?
A Scots name for a peppermint sweet, a pan drop. The Scottish National Dictionary records grannie's sooker in this sense from Glasgow, Fife, Edinburgh, Ayr, Banff and Dumfries.
Sources
- Mint (candy), Wikipedia
- Bassett's, Wikipedia
- Extra Strong Mints, Wikipedia
- Pan (pan drop), Dictionaries of the Scots Language
- Grannie (grannie's sooker), Dictionaries of the Scots Language
Keep reading
- British heritage sweetsPolo mintsPolo, the mint with the hole, was first made by Rowntree's in York in 1948. How it began, why it is called Polo, and the court fight over the shape of a hole.
- British heritage sweetsHumbugsHumbugs are striped boiled sweets, usually peppermint, made in Britain since at least the 1820s. Here is what they are and how they are made.
- How it is madeWhat is sugar panning?Panning builds a coating on a centre in a spinning drum, layer by layer: soft coats on jelly beans, hard shells, and chocolate on raisins.
- British heritage sweetsPear dropsPear drops are pink and yellow British boiled sweets with a sharp, fruity flavour that comes from two esters, one tasting of pear and one of banana.
- British heritage sweetsFisherman's FriendFisherman's Friend lozenges were created in Fleetwood, Lancashire, in 1865 by a pharmacist for deep sea fishermen, and are still made there by Lofthouse.
- British heritage sweetsOld fashioned sweets: the A to ZAn A to Z of old fashioned British sweets, from acid drops and aniseed balls to Wham bars and yellowman, with a line on each and a link to its full story.