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Barley Sugar
Dissolve lump sugar, boil and skim it until it is crisp and clear, and no scum rises; test the crispness by dropping some into cold water. Flavour with lemon-juice or essence of lemon. Pour the sugar on a slate, stone, or marble slab, which has been rubbed over with butter or salad-oil; cut it into strips before it is cold, and twist. If marked with a knife it will break easily, and may be made into any form. Time, ten to fifteen minutes. Sugar, 4d. per pound.
A hard-crack sugar boil with almost no measurements given, which is normal for Victorian confectionery: the cook was expected to judge by eye and by the cold-water test. The temperatures and quantities below are what the original assumes rather than states.
- The hinge: stage of the boil"Crisp and clear" is the hard-crack stage, 300-310F (149-154C). Below that the strips stay tacky and slump; much above it the sugar colours and turns bitter. A sugar thermometer does the work the cold-water test was doing.
- Lump sugar and waterLump sugar is refined cane sugar in loaf or cube form; granulated white sugar is its modern equivalent. No water quantity is given; roughly a third of the sugar's weight in water is enough to dissolve it, and it boils off well before hard crack.
- Dissolve fully before boilingAny undissolved grains on the pan side will seed the syrup and turn the whole batch cloudy and grainy. Wash the sides down with a wet brush and do not stir once it boils.
- SkimmingSugar of the period could carry more impurities than modern refined sugar, which throws off little or no scum, so the skimming step is largely redundant now. A pinch of cream of tartar or a spoonful of glucose syrup guards against crystallising.
- Essence of lemonIn this period the term usually meant oil of lemon, the peel oil, commonly sold dissolved in spirit rather than expressed from the fruit. Add it off the heat: a few drops go a long way, and any alcohol will flash off at 300F. Lemon juice added at that temperature will spit.
- The slabA marble slab or a slate hearth was the standard cooling surface. A silicone mat or a heavy baking sheet oiled lightly works as well; "salad-oil" here means a bland oil, historically olive.
- Cutting and twistingThe window between pourable and brittle is short, perhaps a minute or two. Score with an oiled knife or scissors as soon as the sheet holds its shape, then twist each strip while it is still pliable. Work in a warm dry room; humidity makes barley sugar sticky within hours.
- Yield and keepingKeeping -- Store airtight with a desiccant or wrapped individually; unwrapped it will weep and fuse in a day or two.
- The price note"Sugar, 4d. per pound" is the cost of the ingredient, part of Cassell's habit of costing every dish, not an instruction.
Barley sugar took its name literally: the older French sucre d'orge was boiled with a barley decoction rather than plain water, the barley water being thought to soften the sweet and make it wholesome for coughs and sore throats. By the time Cassell's compiled this entry the name and the twisted stick shape were doing the work, the sweet being flavoured with lemon instead. It is really a lesson in sugar boiling, and it earns its place because boiled sweets were among the few things a domestic cook could make as cheaply as a confectioner could sell them.