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To Make Barley-sugar

A brittle candy made by boiling sugar, water, egg white, and lemon, then cooling and cutting into strips.

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

To Make Barley-sugar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and water in a well-tinned saucepan.

  2. Once the sugar dissolves, set over moderate heat and add beaten egg white.

  3. Stir well and bring to a boil, removing any scum that rises.

  4. Continue boiling until syrup is clear, then strain through a fine sieve or muslin bag.

  5. Return syrup to saucepan and boil until it becomes brittle in cold water.

Flavour and shape

  1. Add lemon juice and essence of lemon, then let stand for a couple of minutes.

  2. Grease a marble slab or large dish with salad oil and pour sugar onto it.

  3. Cut sugar into strips with scissors, twist them, and store in a dry place.

  4. Alternatively, drop small amounts onto the oiled slab to form lozenges or drops.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Sugar
Forms the body of the sweet, brittle candy when boiled to a hard syrup.
Egg white
Helps collect impurities so they can be skimmed off, leaving a clearer syrup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps prevent the sugar from crystallising.

The step that matters

Boiling to brittle in cold water. Sugar must reach the hard-crack stage to set brittle. Stopping early leaves a sticky candy, while overcooking darkens and can scorch the sugar, so test a small drop in cold water.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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