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Dessert

Barley-sugar

A sweet candy made from refined sugar, water, egg white, and lemon juice, boiled until thick and shaped into sticks, lozenges, or balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Barley-sugar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a pot, combine the sugar and spring water.

  2. Add the egg white to clarify the mixture.

  3. Boil until it thickens and begins to whiten.

  4. Stir in the lemon juice and boil quickly until it reaches the desired consistency.

  5. Remove from heat and add lemon essence if using.

Shape and set

  1. Pour onto a lightly oiled marble slab or shallow dish.

  2. When the edges start to harden, shape into sticks, lozenges, or balls.

  3. For other uses, keep the mixture warm in a water bath if it cools too quickly.

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

Highly-refined sugar
Forms the glassy, sweet base that sets hard as the syrup cools.
Egg white
Helps clarify the syrup, lifting impurities so the candy stays clear.
Fresh lemon juice
Adds acidity that helps prevent sugar from crystallising and brightens the flavour.

The step that matters

Boil quickly to the desired consistency. Sugar syrup must reach the right temperature to set hard when cooled. Too little boiling leaves it sticky, while overcooking can make it bitter or brittle-dark. Watching the change closely matters because the syrup moves from workable to ruined fast.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. 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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