Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Barley Sugar
Ingredients
Directions
Make the sugar
Boil sugar in a basin of cold water until it reaches the hard crack stage.
Add lemon juice and essence of lemon, then let it stand for 1-2 minutes.
Shape and store
Grease a marble slab or large dish with salad oil.
Pour the sugar onto the oiled surface and cut it into strips with scissors.
Twist the strips and store the barley sugar in a very dry place.
Alternatively, drop small amounts onto the oiled slab to form lozenges or drops.
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.
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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
- Sugar
- Forms the hard, glassy candy structure when boiled to the hard crack stage.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity and a bright citrus flavour to the sugar.
The step that matters
Boiling to the hard crack stage. Sugar must reach the hard crack stage so that, once cooled, it sets into a firm, brittle candy rather than a sticky or chewy one. Stopping early leaves too much water, so the candy stays soft and tacky.
“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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