Humbug (sweet)

Mint humbugs

Humbugs are a traditional hard boiled sweet available in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. They are usually flavoured with peppermint and striped in two different colours (often brown and tan). They have a hard outside and a soft toffee centre. Humbugs are typically cylinders with rounded ends wrapped in a twist of cellophane,^{[citation needed]} or else 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.

They are more often eaten in winter than summer.^{[citation needed]} The name of the sweet is not related to the phrase "Bah, humbug" derived from Dickens' A Christmas Carol. That expression implies a general dissatisfaction with the Christmas season. However, offering humbugs around Christmas time is now seen by some as humorous or ironic, and was featured in an episode of Blackadder in this manner.

Manufacture

A mixture of sugar, glycerine, colour and flavouring is heated to 145°C. This is then poured out and stretched and folded many times. The stripes originate from a smaller piece of coloured mixture which is folded in to the main mixture. The mixture is finally rolled in to a long, thin cylinder and sliced into segments.

Bulls eyes

Bulls-eyes

A similar sweet is "bulls-eye" which has black and white stripes like a humbug but is spherical like an aniseed ball. These are peppermint flavoured and are also known as bullets in the UK as they are similar in size to smoothbore musket balls.^{[citation needed]}

See also

• Gobstopper