Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓
Barley Sugar
Ingredients
Directions
Make the sugar
Clarify the sugar until it reaches the crack stage.
Add the lemon juice and lemon essence.
Let it boil once or twice.
Set the mixture aside for a few minutes.
Shape
Grease a marble slab or large slate with almond oil.
Pour the sugar mixture onto the slab.
Cut it into long strips with scissors, twisting them slightly.
For drops, use a ladle with a fine lip to drop the mixture onto the greased marble or a sheet of white paper with sifted sugar.
Store
Once cooled, store the barley sugar in tin boxes or canisters.
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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Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,154 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
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Almond + barleytop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together78 recipes
Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).
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Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,655 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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Almond + gingertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,163 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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Lemon + barleytop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together484 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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 structure as it is heated and cooled.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
- Lemon essence
- Adds concentrated lemon aroma to the candy.
The step that matters
Clarify the sugar until it reaches the crack stage. Sugar must be heated to the hard-crack range so that, once cooled, it sets hard and brittle rather than sticky. Undercooked sugar stays tacky and will not hold its shape.
Swap the ginger
The recipe marks ginger as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon, almond, barley):
- Cinnamonfits better
- Nutmegfits better
- Thymefits better
- Gingerthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, almond, barley. 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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