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Dessert

Barley Sugar

A sweet candy made by boiling egg whites, water, and clarified sugar with lemon essence.

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

Make the syrup

  1. Beat the egg whites until frothy.

  2. Combine the egg whites, water, and sugar in an earthen pot.

  3. Add the essence or oil of lemons for flavor.

  4. Boil the mixture quickly, skimming off any foam.

  5. Continue boiling until the mixture is stiff enough.

Shape

  1. Pour it 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
Their proteins rise into foam and help clarify the syrup as they set and are skimmed off.
Lump sugar
Forms the body of the candy; boiling concentrates it until it sets firm when cooled.
Water
Dissolves the sugar so it can be boiled evenly into a syrup.
Essence or oil of lemons
Adds lemon aroma and flavor to the finished candy.

The step that matters

Continue boiling until the mixture is stiff enough. Sugar sets by concentration: if boiled too little, too much water remains and the candy stays soft and sticky; boiling too long can make it brittle or darken. Stopping at the right point gives a firm, shapeable candy.

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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