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 ↓
Hoarhound Candy
Ingredients
Directions
Make the infusion
Boil the dried hoarhound in 3 pints of water for 20 minutes.
Strain and press the liquid through a fine sieve.
Make the candy
For each pint of liquid, add 2 pounds of granulated sugar and heat until dissolved.
Once boiling, add the juice of half a lemon.
Boil until it reaches the hard crack stage, keeping the pan sides clean with a wet sponge.
Pour the mixture onto a cold, greased marble slab.
When cool enough, fold in the edges and cut into bars or squares.
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.
-
Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 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
- Dried hoarhound
- Provides the characteristic bitter, herbal flavour that gives the candy its taste.
- Granulated sugar
- Forms the sweet, glassy candy body as the syrup cooks to hard crack stage.
- Water
- Extracts the flavour from the hoarhound and dissolves the sugar into a syrup.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps prevent sugar from crystallising.
The step that matters
Boil to the hard crack stage. Sugar syrup must reach the hard crack stage for the candy to set firm and brittle once cooled. Stopping early leaves it sticky, while overcooking makes it bitter and scorched. Keeping the pan sides clean with a wet sponge prevents stray sugar crystals from triggering grainy crystallisation.
“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.
You might also like
Lemon Cake228 recipes
Lemon Ice147 recipes
Lemon Sherbet103 recipes
Lemon Custard64 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.