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Barley Sugar

A candied confection made by boiling barley sugar with water, lemon juice, and saffron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and saffron match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 538 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Barley Sugar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve the loaf sugar in the water over low heat.

  2. Add the lemon juice and cream of tartar, stirring until combined.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil and cook until it reaches a soft ball stage.

Flavor and set

  1. Remove from heat and add essence of lemon and saffron coloring.

  2. Pour into a greased mold and let it cool before cutting into pieces.

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 + saffrontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together538 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Cream + saffrontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together243 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Lemon + creamtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Loaf sugar
Forms the sweet base that cooks down into a clear, hard candy when cooled.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that helps keep the sugar from crystallizing.
Cream of tartar
Acts as an acid that helps prevent sugar crystals from forming in the syrup.

The step that matters

Cooking to the soft ball stage. Sugar syrup must reach the correct temperature to set into the intended texture. Undercooking leaves it sticky and soft, while overcooking makes it brittle or scorched.

Swap the saffron

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Peppermintfits about as well
  4. Saffronthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, cream. 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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