Home | Cookbooks | Diary | Magic Menu | Surprise! | More ≡

Humbugs

Sweets and Toffee

Strongly mint-flavoured, plain, hard boiled sugar sweets. Usually with brown and pale stripes, often with a softer centre.


Mint humbugs
Photo: Ka Faraq Gatri


'Humbug' originally meant; 'a thing which is not really what it pretends to be; a deception'. It seems to have got transferred to the sweet around the early 19th Century. Mrs. Gaskell, in 'Sylvia's Lovers' of 1863 finds it necessary to explain the word; "He had provided himself with a paper of humbugs for the child- 'humbugs' being the north-country term for certain lumps of toffy, well-flavoured with peppermint."




MORE FROM Foods of England...
Cookbooks Diary Index Magic Menu Random Really English? Timeline Donate English Service Food Map of England Lost Foods Accompaniments Biscuits Breads Cakes and Scones Cheeses Classic Meals Curry Dishes Dairy Drinks Egg Dishes Fish Fruit Fruits & Vegetables Game & Offal Meat & Meat Dishes Pastries and Pies Pot Meals Poultry Preserves & Jams Puddings & Sweets Sauces and Spicery Sausages Scones Soups Sweets and Toffee About ... Bookshop

Email: editor@foodsofengland.co.uk


COPYRIGHT and ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: © Glyn Hughes 2022
BUILT WITH WHIMBERRY