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Dessert

Barley Sugar

A candied syrup made from sugar, water, and lemon juice, boiled and skimmed to clarity.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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. Combine sugar and water in a pan and bring to a boil.

  2. Boil for 5 minutes without stirring.

  3. Remove from heat and let stand for 2 minutes.

  4. Skim the syrup carefully.

  5. Return to heat.

  6. Add a little reserved water.

  7. Repeat skimming until clear.

  8. Strain through muslin into a clean pan.

Finish and cool

  1. Boil again.

  2. Add lemon juice.

  3. Stir until it foams.

  4. Remove from heat immediately.

  5. Pour onto dishes to cool.

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).

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, hard candy base as the syrup cooks and cools.
Strained lemon juice
Adds acidity that helps keep the sugar from recrystallising into grainy crystals.

The step that matters

Skim the syrup until clear. Skimming removes impurities and foam that would cloud the candy, and straining through muslin removes remaining particles. Clear syrup gives a glassy, translucent result.

“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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