Humbugs are a traditional hard

boiled sweet A hard candy (American English), or boiled sweet (British English), is a sugar candy prepared from one or more sugar-based syrups that is heated to a temperature of 160 °C (320 °F) to make candy. Among the many hard candy varieti ...

available in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

, Australia, and

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

. They are usually flavoured with

peppermint Peppermint (''Mentha'' × ''piperita'') is a hybrid species of mint, a cross between watermint and spearmint. Indigenous to Europe and the Middle East, the plant is now widely spread and cultivated in many regions of the world.Euro+Med Plantba ...

and striped in two different colours (often black and white). In Australia, the black and white striped humbugs are flavoured

aniseed Anise (; '), also called aniseed or rarely anix is a flowering plant in the family Apiaceae native to Eurasia. The flavor and aroma of its seeds have similarities with some other spices and herbs, such as star anise, fennel, licorice, and t ...

and sold at all major supermarkets. Humbugs may be cylinders with rounded ends wrapped in a twist of

cellophane Cellophane is a thin, transparent sheet made of regenerated cellulose. Its low permeability to air, oils, greases, bacteria, and liquid water makes it useful for food packaging. Cellophane is highly permeable to water vapour, but may be coated ...

, or more traditionally tetrahedral formed from pinched cylinders with a 90-degree turn between one end and the other (shaped like a pyramid with rounded edges) loose in a bag. Records of humbugs exist from as early as the 1820s, and they are referred to in the 1863 book '' Sylvia's Lovers'' as being a food from the North.

Manufacture

A mixture of sugar,

glycerine Glycerol (), also called glycerine in British English and glycerin in American English, is a simple triol compound. It is a colorless, odorless, viscous liquid that is sweet-tasting and non-toxic. The glycerol backbone is found in lipids known ...

, colour, and flavouring is heated to . This mixture is then poured out, and stretched and folded many times. The stripes originate from a smaller piece of coloured mixture which is folded into the main mixture. The mixture is finally rolled into a long, thin cylinder and sliced into segments.

Bulls-eyes

A similar sweet is "bulls-eye" which has red and white or black and white stripes . These are peppermint flavoured and are also known as bullets in the UK as they are similar in size to

smoothbore A smoothbore weapon is one that has a barrel without rifling. Smoothbores range from handheld firearms to powerful tank guns and large artillery mortars. History Early firearms had smoothly bored barrels that fired projectiles without signi ...

musket balls A musket is a muzzle-loaded long gun that appeared as a smoothbore weapon in the early 16th century, at first as a heavier variant of the arquebus, capable of penetrating plate armour. By the mid-16th century, this type of musket gradually d ...

Everton mints

Another popular mint in the UK is the Everton mint, which is also striped black and white with a

toffee Toffee is a confection made by caramelizing sugar or molasses (creating inverted sugar) along with butter, and occasionally flour. The mixture is heated until its temperature reaches the hard crack stage of . While being prepared, toffee ...

centre. Its origins are thought to lie in a coffee shop in the Everton district of

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a populat ...

and gives Everton F.C. its nickname of "The Toffees". The mints are distributed nationally through various manufacturers and brandings, the best known of which being

Bassett's George Bassett & Co., known simply as Bassett's, was a British confectionery company and is now used as a brand of Cadbury, owned by Mondelēz International. The company was founded in Sheffield by George Bassett in 1842. Perhaps the company's ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Humbug (Sweet) British confectionery Candy Victorian cuisine

Manufacture

Bulls-eyes

Everton mints

See also

References