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Barley Sugar Drots

Barley sugar drops are small round drops of boiled barley sugar, flavored with lemon rind and coated in powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and lemon work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 484 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Barley Sugar Drots

Ingredients

Directions

Make the drops

  1. Prepare barley sugar as usual.

  2. When boiling, add the grated rind of 1-2 lemons.

  3. Drop the syrup onto a marble surface in small round drops, about the size of a shilling.

  4. Let the drops cool completely.

Finish and store

  1. Coat them with powdered sugar as you remove them from the marble.

  2. Store the cooled drops in paper.

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. Barley + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Barley + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Barley sugar
Forms the clear, hard candy base that sets as the syrup cools.
Rind of 1-2 lemons
Adds aromatic lemon flavour from the oils in the zest.
Powdered sugar
Coats the cooled drops to add a light, dry sweetness and reduce stickiness.

The step that matters

Dropping the syrup onto the marble. The syrup must be hot and fluid enough to form even rounds, but it hardens quickly as it cools. Working promptly keeps the drops a consistent size and shape before the sugar sets.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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