Old-fashioned sweets 1

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I just realised recently how many of my posts are about food! Followed by plants... or food and plants! Nevertheless here’s another food-related post. I was just telling the girls the other day that when I was growing up there were certain sweets that you could always buy from chemist’s shops. Of course they sold pastilles for sore throats and that sort of thing, but they also sold Parma Violets, barley sugar (pictured), and liquorice root. I think this is because people used to (and still do) suck Parma Violets for fresh breath, barley sugar for nausea (such as travel sickness) and liquorice root for digestive problems. With that in mind I bought some barley sugar to see if it would help Little One with her car sickness. And of course I had some too, for old time’s sake The barley sugar always used to come as twists, which is why the spiral legs of furniture of a certain vintage are known as ‘barley sugar twist’; sadly nowadays the barley sugar always seems to come as the regular roundish shapes and I couldn’t even find an image of the twists with the aid of Google, except for this recipe for kosher barley sugar! https://oukosher.org/recipes/barley-sugar/ Does anyone else have fond memories of sucking a barley sugar twist on a car journey? All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2022.