Horehound Candy
Ingredients
Directions
Make the horehound infusion
Boil the dried horehound in water for about 30 minutes, or until one-third of the water has evaporated.
Strain the mixture and add the brown sugar.
Cook and set
Boil over high heat until the mixture is sufficiently hard.
Pour into greased pans or onto a slab.
Cut into tablets or spin into stick form when cool enough.
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
- Dried horehound
- Provides the bitter, herbal flavour that defines the candy.
- Brown sugar
- Supplies the sweetness and body, and sets into a hard, glassy candy when boiled down.
- Water
- Extracts the flavour from the horehound and dissolves the sugar as the mixture cooks.
The step that matters
Boil over high heat until sufficiently hard. Sugar candy sets by concentrating: as water boils off, the sugar reaches a temperature where it cools into a hard, brittle glass. Stopping too early leaves a soft, sticky candy, while cooking too long can scorch the sugar and make it 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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