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Dessert

Horehound Cake

A cake made by boiling horehound tea with sugar, then cooling and cutting into shapes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Horehound Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tea

  1. Make horehound tea by pouring boiling water over the horehound in a basin.

  2. Once the tea is cold, pour it into a preserving pan with the crushed sugar.

Cook and set

  1. Heat over a clear fire and boil until it reaches the 'blown' stage.

  2. Remove from heat and stir with a wooden spoon until the mixture thickens and begins to set.

  3. Pour the mixture onto a slightly oiled marble slab, about ¼ inch thick.

Cut and store

  1. Stamp out heart shapes with a cutter or cut into small squares.

  2. Allow to cool and break into pieces or keep whole.

  3. Store in jars or canisters away from air.

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

What each ingredient does

Horehound
Provides the bitter, herbal flavour that defines the candy.
Crushed loaf sugar
Forms the sweet candy base that sets firm as it cools.

The step that matters

Boiling to the 'blown' stage. Sugar syrup must reach the right temperature to set into a brittle candy once cooled. Too little boiling leaves it soft and sticky, while overheating turns it dark and bitter.

“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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