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 sugar
Boil the sugar until it reaches the cracked stage, tested by dipping a spoon into the sugar and then into cold water; it should appear brittle.
Add the lemon juice and lemon essence, then let it boil up once or twice.
Set the mixture aside for a few minutes.
Shape and store
Grease a marble slab or smooth stone with sweet oil.
Pour the sugar mixture onto the slab and cut it into long stripes with scissors.
Twist the stripes slightly and let them cool.
Store the cooled barley sugar in tin boxes or canisters to keep it fresh.
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.
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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
- Refined sugar
- Forms the brittle, glassy candy structure as it is boiled to the cracked stage.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps keep the sugar from crystallising.
The step that matters
Boiling to the cracked stage. Sugar must reach the cracked stage, around 130 to 150°C, so the cooled candy sets hard and brittle. Stopping early leaves it soft and sticky.
“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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