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Dessert

Syrups for Candies

A clear, thick syrup made from sugar, water, egg white, barley, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and lemon work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 484 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Syrups for Candies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sugar syrup

  1. Combine cold water and loaf sugar in a pot and stir until dissolved.

  2. Add the egg white and beat the mixture well.

  3. Heat the mixture until it boils.

  4. Remove from heat and skim off the scum.

  5. Return to heat and let it boil.

  6. Add a few drops of cold water, remove from heat and skim again.

  7. Repeat until no scum rises.

Make the barley jelly

  1. Soak barley overnight.

  2. Boil the barley gently in more water until it becomes a clear, thin jelly.

  3. Add sugar to the barley jelly and add lemon juice to the barley jelly.

  4. Boil until clear and thick.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into buttered plates or saucers.

  2. Let it set hard.

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. Barley + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Loaf sugar
Provides sweetness and, dissolved and boiled, forms the syrup that sets into a firm candy.
Barley
Its starch thickens with boiling and gives the candy a jelly-like body.
Egg white
Its proteins coagulate when heated, helping collect scum so the syrup can be cleared.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and helps keep the sugar from crystallising.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum until none rises. Impurities left in the syrup cloud the candy and can make it grainy. Repeated skimming after each short boil removes the coagulated egg white and debris, leaving a clear, smooth result.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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