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Ireland: Yellowman (Crunchy Brown Sugar and Golden Syrup Toffee): March 14, 2008

The words "Ireland" and "candy" probably don't automatically go together in most people's minds when considering traditional Irish food. In the last few decades, of course, renowned Irish candy-makers have sprung up -- specifically chocolatiers like Lír and Lily O'Brien's. But much older than anything these folks produce is a traditional Irish sweet that hails from the northern counties, and is famous enough to have been enshrined in song.

Yellowman is associated with the great annual harvest-time cattle fair at Ballycastle, County Antrim. ("Did you treat your Mary Ann / To some dulse and yellowman / at the old Lammas Fair / at Ballycastle, O?" asks the old song.) It's a toffee based on golden syrup and brown sugar. Vinegar sharpens the taste, and the toffee acquires a unique bubbly, light, crunchy consistency due to the reaction of the vinegar with the baking soda that's added to the mixture when it's hot enough. Yellowman was sold from numerous competing stalls at the Ballycastle fair, the various entrepreneurs making all kinds of claims for their own product. One stallkeeper claimed that his family's recipe for yellowman would cure all known diseases. (Pity it wasn't true.)

Yellowman is fairly quick and easy to make if you want to give it a try. It's a pleasant candy just eaten on its own: and some of the new generation of Irish chefs have started putting it in other desserts, such as ice cream.

Click on "read more" for the recipe.

Ireland: Potato Candy

Every few years we get a small number of hits on our site from people who're looking for something called Irish Potato Candy.

When these inquiries first started coming in, EuroCuisineLady had been living in Ireland for about thirteen or fourteen years, and had never seen or heard of any kind of potato candy here. So she asked various of her neighbors and Irish friends about it. They told her that wherever "Irish potato candy" came from, it wasn't Ireland. None of the natives had ever seen or heard of it before, and they chalked it up to being yet another Irish-American invention like green beer. (To judge from this page, it may have come from Philadelphia.)

That said, people do still come to our site looking for potato candy. So here are the three recipes we've been able to dig up. (Also don't forget the above-referenced Philly-based confectioner selling their own version of Irish potato candy online.)

The first of these recipes has peanut butter in it, which instantly marks it out as not being native Irish: peanut butter was not available in Ireland before the 1980's except in a very few gourmet groceries. Now it can be found in supermarkets, but it's still not hugely popular.

The second recipe involves making a dough of out of mashed potato and confectioners' sugar (and sometimes shredded coconut as well) and then rolling it in cinnamon.

The third recipe produces tiny little potato shapes, but doesn't actually have any potato in it: its main ingredients are butter, cream cheese, confectioners' sugar, and coconut.

Click on "read more" for the recipes.

(Also, if you're interested in a traditional Irish candy dating back more than two centuries, check out our recipe for Yellowman, a crunchy brown sugar-based toffee.

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