Skip to main content
Dessert

To Maize Barley-Sugar

A sugar candy made by clarifying and boiling sugar to crackling height, flavored with lemon zest, citron oil, spermaceti, butter, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

To Maize Barley-Sugar

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the sugar

  1. Clarify and boil the sugar until it reaches crackling height.

  2. When nearly done, add lemon zest, citron oil, or spermaceti as desired.

  3. To prevent burning, add a bit of butter to the boiling sugar.

  4. If the sugar is in danger of graining, add lemon juice.

Pour and shape

  1. Rub a slab or dish with oil.

  2. Dip the pan in cold water for 2 minutes, then pour the sugar thinly onto the dish.

  3. Cut the sugar into slips and twist while hot.

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. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Granulated sugar
Forms the glassy, brittle candy structure as it cools after boiling.
Lemon zest
Adds bright citrus aroma from the oils in the peel.
Citron oil
Adds concentrated citrus flavour and aroma in a very small amount.
Lemon juice
Its acidity helps prevent the sugar from turning grainy and crystallising.
Butter
Its fat helps prevent the sugar from scorching on the pan.

The step that matters

Stopping the sugar from graining. Sugar that crystallises turns grainy instead of clear and glassy. Acid such as lemon juice slightly breaks down sucrose, which helps keep the syrup smooth while it boils.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter. 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.

More barley sugar recipes

Drops 9 See all 69 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes