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Dessert

Barley-sugar

A sweet confection made by boiling sugar with water, egg white, and lemon, then shaping 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. In a pot, combine sugar and spring water.

  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 until ready.

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

Shape and set

  1. Pour onto a lightly oiled marble slab or shallow dish.

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

  3. If needed, reheat gently in a water bath to liquefy for other uses.

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

Sugar
Forms the glassy candy base that hardens as it cools.
Egg white
Binds impurities so they can be skimmed away, leaving a clearer syrup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps limit sugar crystallisation.

The step that matters

Boil until it thickens and begins to whiten. Cooking the syrup to the right stage sets how firm the finished candy becomes. Undercooked syrup stays sticky, while overcooking can scorch it and turn it bitter.

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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