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Dessert

Barley Sugar

A candied sweet made by boiling egg whites, water, clarified sugar, and lemon essence until stiff, then poured and shaped.

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

Prepare

  1. In an earthen pot, combine the egg whites and water.

  2. Add the clarified sugar and lemon essence.

Cook and shape

  1. Boil quickly, skimming constantly, until the mixture is stiff enough.

  2. Pour into a shallow dish and shape as desired.

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

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

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Egg whites
Egg whites coagulate and rise as foam, carrying impurities to the surface for skimming.
Clarified sugar
Sugar provides the sweetness and hardens into a brittle, glassy candy as the syrup cooks.
Lemon essence
Lemon essence adds aroma and flavour to the finished candy.

The step that matters

Boil quickly and skim constantly until stiff. Boiling quickly and skimming keeps the syrup clean and brings it to the right stiffness. Undercooked syrup stays sticky, while overcooked sugar turns dark and bitter. Skimming removes the coagulated egg white and impurities that rise to the surface.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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