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Dessert

Barley-sugar

A sweet confection made by boiling sugar with water, egg white, and lemon, then cooling into sticks, lozenges, or balls.

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

Barley-sugar

Oven, in the book's wordsA very gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and spring water in a pot.

  2. Add egg white to clarify the mixture.

  3. Boil until it thickens and begins to whiten.

  4. Stir in lemon juice and boil quickly.

  5. Add essence of lemon just before removing from heat.

Shape and set

  1. Pour onto a greased marble slab or shallow dish.

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

  3. For liquid use, keep warm in a water bath.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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 base of the candy and sets into a clear, brittle glass as it cools.
Egg white
Helps clarify the syrup, collecting impurities so the candy comes out clear.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that helps prevent sugar from crystallising, keeping the candy smooth.

The step that matters

Boil quickly after adding lemon juice. Sugar syrup must reach the right temperature to set into hard, brittle candy. Overcooking can cause darkening and a bitter taste, while undercooking leaves it sticky.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

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

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