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Dessert

Barley Sugar

A sweet dessert made from boiled barley, sugar, lemon juice, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and lemon work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 484 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Barley Sugar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the barley

  1. Soak the barley overnight.

  2. In the morning, simmer the barley in more water until it is as clear as thin jelly.

  3. Strain the barley, then add the sugar and lemon juice.

Cook the mixture

  1. Boil again until it reaches the hard ball stage.

  2. Remove from the stove and whip in the stiff egg white.

Set and cut

  1. Pour the mixture into buttered pans.

  2. Once cool enough, mark into squares.

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. Barley + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Barley + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Barley
Forms the clear liquid base that the sugar is cooked into.
White sugar
Provides sweetness and, when boiled, sets into a hard, glassy candy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps discourage the sugar from crystallising.
Egg white
Whipped in at the end to add air and lighten the texture.

The step that matters

Boiling to the hard ball stage. Sugar must reach the hard ball stage to set firm. Stopping early leaves the candy soft and sticky, while boiling too long can scorch the sugar and give it a bitter, burnt flavour.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, sugar, egg. 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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