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Barley-Sugar, to Make
INGREDIENTS for 6 sticks.-2 lbs. of sugar, 1/2 pint of water, the white of an egg. AVERAGE COST, 7d.
Put the sugar into a well-tinned saucepan, with the water, and, when the former is dissolved, set it over a moderate fire, adding the egg, well-beaten, before the mixture gets warm, and stir it well together.
BARLEY-WATER.
BATTER PUDDING.
TIME.-4½ hours.
SEASONABLE in winter, when fresh fruit When it boils, remove the scum as it rises, and keep it boiling until no more appears, and the syrup looks perfectly clear; then is not obtainable. strain it through a fine sieve or muslin bag, and put it back into the saucepan. Boil it again like caramel, until it is brittle when a little is dropped in a basin of cold water: it is then sufficiently boiled.
Add a little lemon-juice and a few drops of essence of lemon, and let it stand for a minute or two. Have ready a marble slab or large dish, rubbed over with saladoil: pour on it the sugar, and cut it into strips with a pair of scis scissors: these strips should then be twisted, and the barley-sugar stored away in a very dry place. It may be formed into lozenges or drops, by dropping the sugar in a very small quantity at a time on the oiled slab or dish.
TIME.- hour. )
A straightforward hard-boiled sugar confection, complicated only by the fact that the page has picked up stray lines from neighbouring entries. Ignore "TIME.—4 hours" and "SEASONABLE in winter" — those belong to the barley-water and batter pudding headings that have bled into the column. The working time is about half an hour.
- The hinge: temperature, not guesswork"Brittle when a little is dropped in a basin of cold water" is the hard-crack stage, around 300-310F. A sugar thermometer removes the guesswork; syrup pulled short of hard crack is likely to stay chewy and to soften rather than hold a stick.
- There is no barley in itOlder versions were boiled with a barley decoction, which is where the name stuck. By Mrs Beeton's day the recipe is plain sugar, water and lemon, and the barley has gone entirely.
- Quantities2 lb sugar is about 4½ cups; ½ pint in an English book of this period is 10 fl oz, roughly 1¼ US cups. Six sticks from 2 lb of sugar suggests substantial sticks — expect more like a dozen at modern sweet-shop size.
- The egg whiteIt is a clarifying agent, not an ingredient in the finished sweet. Beaten white added to cold syrup coagulates as the pan heats and carries impurities up into the scum, which is then skimmed and strained off. Skip it and use fine granulated sugar and the result is much the same.
- "Well-tinned saucepan"A pan lined with tin, usually copper but sometimes iron, the lining chosen so the metal would not react with an acid syrup. Use heavy stainless steel; avoid unlined aluminium, and avoid nonstick, which does not like 300F sugar.
- CrystallisationWash any sugar crystals down the sides of the pan with a wet brush and do not stir once boiling begins. Note that in this recipe the lemon juice goes in only after the sugar has reached its final stage, so it is there for flavour rather than to keep the batch from graining.
- Pouring and cuttingOil a marble slab or a rimmed baking sheet with a neutral oil, not olive. Let the sheet of sugar firm for a minute, then cut and twist quickly with oiled scissors; the window is short, and once it has cooled much further it will crack rather than bend.
- Storage"A very dry place" is the operative instruction. Boiled sugar draws water from the air and goes tacky within hours in a humid kitchen; wrap the sticks individually in waxed paper and keep them in an airtight tin.
- Cost7d, sevenpence, for six sticks; of no use as a modern guide beyond showing this was reckoned an inexpensive treat.
Barley sugar takes its name from the practice of boiling the syrup with a barley infusion, a method generally traced to French sucre d'orge, long associated with the town of Moret-sur-Loing, where nuns are traditionally credited with making it from the seventeenth century. The barley was thought to soften the sweet's effect on the chest and throat, which is why barley sugar sat for centuries somewhere between a confection and a mild remedy for coughs and travel sickness. By the time this entry was compiled the barley had quietly disappeared and only the name remained, the recipe reduced to sugar, water, egg white for clarifying and lemon for flavour and clarity. It belongs to the section of Victorian household books devoted to boiled sugar work — the same skills that produced caramel, toffee and spun sugar.