Edward Barrow: crusty old pedant here but none of those pictures are really humbugs imo, humbugs are pyramid-shaped made by giving the pulled candy they're cut from a quarter-turn between each cut.

Deleted.

Lol tell that to my teen, they might stop eating my car-sweets. Mint Humbugs are a standard bagged sweet in the UK. I meant "have Americans not heard of them?"

Well, when I read the definition, I imagined it referred to these (pictured)...similar? We have gobs of hard candies. I am sure it can be bought here. And maybe I have had humbug candy. Until tonight, i just only related "humbug" with "Bah humbug!"

You're not entirely wrong - the flavour and texture are similar, but they're more ovoid, with stripes running tip to tip. The black can sometimes be more brown, and the white more yellow, plus there are Everton Mints which are a very similar thing. It's a whole world of confection.

crusty old pedant here but none of those pictures are really humbugs imo, humbugs are pyramid-shaped made by giving the pulled candy they're cut from a quarter-turn between each cut.

I was about to say the same thing. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humbug_...

There's a nice video featuring an antique humbug roller here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eIa...

#18 Victorian Steampunk Humbug Candy, and why is it called a humbug anyway?www.youtube.com Humbug candies are traditional candies for the holidays. Why are they called a Humbug? How are they made? Watch Public Displays of Confection http://www.pd.net at Lofty Pursuits make Humbugs on equipment that is 150 years old while they try and figure out the origin of the term humbug.

Thank you all for this rich amazing debate. As an ESL speaker it was very interesting and I got some quite cool new vocabulary besides learning about a traditional confection technique! 🥰

they sell them online sometimes, too! www.pd.net

Lofty Pursuits®www.pd.net Public Displays of Confection - Bringing Victorian hard candy to life.

As a side note, humbug-shaped satin cushions are newfangled nonsense.

Interesting. I've never seen them in that shape, only the pillow-like ones I posted. I assume the manufacturing techniques changed in later years.

Yes almost certainly the oval ones are probably made by machine pouring the mix into a mould, the pyramid ones are probably made by hand a traditional pulled candy

It could be local preferences too.

True. There may be room for a study in regional and chronological variations in traditional sweets.

Bah

You say “bah humbug”, I say “yum, humbug”. We are not the same

You're damn right we're not, I'm rich

Never heard of 'humbugs' but I'd swear these stripey puffed pyramids used to be a thing in the US when I was a kid, as part of a generic hard candy mix that grandmas used to keep in a dish on the coffee table. (Probably convergent evolution or something.)

I first learned about those on "Danger Mouse".

If you're ever in Lincoln a visit here is worth it. www.goodiessweets.co.uk

www.goodiessweets.co.uk

Yes. The cellophane wrapped oval ones are Everton mints.

Some of them are. Some are sold as Humbugs, and are often a slightly different colour to the Everton Mints. It's clearly a whole thing. We can't even agree on the name of a small round unit of bread, so why should we agree on sweets?

I take delight in variety. I do. But I need to know, by title, whether my boiled sweet has a soft centre or not!

I know those. They have a different name in Germany.

I like Ba humbugi

Serious question: how much if at all has their reputation suffered from presumably „Bah! Humbug!“ being so readily available in the collective knowledge?

In India we got these ovoid black-and-white hard sweets that were called bullseyes. Any relation?

Adding yet another tangent - in the USA bullseyes are chewy caramels with a vanilla cream center.

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