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Dessert

Barley-sugab

A sweet candy made from barley, sugar, water, egg white, and lemon juice, shaped 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-sugab

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and spring water in a pot.

  2. Add enough egg white to clarify the mixture.

  3. Boil until it begins to whiten and thickens.

  4. Stir in lemon juice and boil quickly until ready.

  5. Optionally add a few drops of lemon essence just before removing from heat.

Shape and set

  1. Pour onto a greased marble slab or shallow dish.

  2. When it starts to harden at the edges, shape into sticks, lozenges, or balls.

  3. If still liquid, keep warm in a water bath to prevent hardening.

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

Highly-refined sugar
Forms the bulk of the candy and sets into a firm, glassy texture as it cools.
Egg white
Helps clarify the syrup, binding impurities so they can be skimmed off for a clear result.
Fresh lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and helps prevent the sugar from crystallising.

The step that matters

Boil until it begins to whiten and thickens. Sugar syrup must reach the right concentration to set firm; too little boiling leaves it soft and sticky, while overcooking makes it brittle or scorched. Watching for the whitening and thickening signals the point to pour.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. 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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