Horehound Candy
Ingredients
Directions
Make the decoction
Boil the dried horehound in 1½ pints of water for about 30 minutes to make a strong decoction.
Strain the mixture and add 3½ pounds of brown sugar.
Cook and set
Boil over high heat until it reaches the desired hardness.
Pour the mixture into well‑greased flat tin trays.
Mark into sticks or squares with a knife as it cools and retains its shape.
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 characteristic bitter herbal flavour that the candy is known for.
- Brown sugar
- Forms the bulk of the candy and, once boiled to hardness, sets into a firm, glassy sweet.
- Water
- Extracts the flavour from the horehound and dissolves the sugar during boiling.
The step that matters
Boil over high heat until it reaches the desired hardness. Sugar candy sets according to how far its water has boiled off. Stopping too early leaves it soft and sticky, while boiling too long makes it brittle or scorched, so the cook must judge the stage carefully.
“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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