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 ↓
Hoarhound Candy
Ingredients
Directions
Make the decoction
Boil the hoarhound in 3 pints of water for 20 minutes to make a decoction.
Strain and press the liquid through a fine sieve.
Cook the candy
For each pint of liquid, add 2 pounds of sugar and heat while stirring until dissolved.
Once the mixture boils, add the juice of half a lemon.
Boil until it reaches the hard crack stage, keeping the sides of the pan clean with a wet sponge.
Pour and cut
Pour the mixture onto a cold, greased marble slab.
When cool enough, turn the slab in the edges and cut into bars or squares.
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
- Dried hoarhound
- Gives the candy its characteristic bitter, herbal flavour.
- Granulated sugar
- Provides sweetness and, once boiled to hard crack, sets into a brittle candy.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity, which helps keep the sugar syrup from turning grainy.
The step that matters
Boil to the hard crack stage. The candy sets only when enough water has boiled off to reach the hard crack stage. Stopping early leaves it sticky, while overcooking makes it bitter and brittle. Keeping the pan sides clean prevents sugar crystals from falling back into the syrup and making it grainy.
“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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