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Dessert

To Make Barley-sugar

A candied sugar made by boiling sugar and water with egg white, lemon juice, and lemon essence, then cooled 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. Combine sugar and water in a well-tinned saucepan and dissolve the sugar.

  2. Add the well-beaten egg white before the mixture warms, then stir well.

  3. Bring to a boil, removing any scum that rises.

  4. Continue boiling until the syrup is clear and no more scum appears.

  5. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve or muslin bag back into the saucepan.

  6. Boil again until a drop in cold water becomes brittle.

Flavour and shape

  1. Add a little lemon juice and a few drops of lemon essence.

  2. Let it stand for 1-2 minutes.

  3. Prepare a marble slab or large dish greased with salad oil.

  4. Pour the sugar onto the slab.

  5. Cut it into strips with scissors.

  6. Twist the strips.

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

Store

  1. Store the barley sugar in a very dry place.

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 brittle, glassy structure of the sweet once the syrup is boiled and cooled.
Egg white
Its proteins collect and lift impurities, which are then skimmed off as scum during boiling.

The step that matters

Boil again until a drop in cold water becomes brittle. Sugar hardens as its water evaporates and its temperature rises. Stopping too early leaves it soft and sticky, while going too far makes it bitter and dark.

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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