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Dessert

To Make Barley-sugar

A brittle confection made from sugar, water, egg white, lemon juice, and lemon essence, poured onto an oiled slab and cut into strips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

To Make Barley-sugar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a well-tinned saucepan, combine the sugar and water.

  2. Once the sugar dissolves, set it over moderate heat and add the beaten egg white.

  3. Stir well and bring to a boil, removing any scum that rises.

  4. Continue boiling until the syrup is clear, then strain through a fine sieve.

  5. Return the syrup to the saucepan and boil until it becomes brittle in cold water.

Flavour and shape

  1. Add lemon juice and lemon essence, then let it sit for a minute.

  2. Grease a marble slab or large dish with salad oil.

  3. Pour the sugar onto the slab and cut it into strips with scissors.

  4. Twist the strips and store the barley sugar in a dry place.

  5. Alternatively, drop small amounts onto the oiled slab to form lozenges or drops.

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. Sugar + eggtop 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

Sugar
Forms the glassy, brittle candy structure as the syrup cooks and hardens.
Egg white
Helps clarify the syrup by binding impurities so they can be skimmed off as scum.
Lemon juice
Adds a bright acidic note that balances the sweetness of the sugar.

The step that matters

Boiling until brittle in cold water. Sugar candy sets according to how far its water has evaporated and how hot it gets. Boiling too little leaves a sticky candy that will not hold its shape, while overcooking makes it bitter or burnt.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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