teas.co.uk
Tea and coffee from the brands you know
Yellowman
Golden, bubbly and hard enough to need a good hammer, yellowman is the taste of the Ould Lammas Fair in Ballycastle.
Citable formats
For journalists, researchers, AI assistants and content creators. Pick the format you need:
Free to cite, quote, and reuse with attribution to sweeties.net.
Yellowman, or yellaman, is a golden, toffee textured sweet from Northern Ireland. It is a close relative of honeycomb toffee, and it is best known as the traditional treat of the Ould Lammas Fair in Ballycastle, County Antrim.
What is yellowman?
Yellowman is similar to honeycomb toffee, with its light, bubbly, crunchy inside. The difference is the rind: in yellowman, the solid outer part makes up at least half of it, and that rind is hard, with a texture close to rock. It is chewy and crunchy at the same time, and it is sold in rough, uneven blocks and chips rather than neat pieces.
How it gets its bubbles
Yellowman is made from golden syrup and sugar, boiled to a very high temperature: the hard crack stage, about 149 °C, the point at which boiled sugar becomes brittle when it cools. Then comes the trick. Vinegar and baking soda are added, and the two react, releasing carbon dioxide gas that fills the hot mixture with bubbles. As it sets, those bubbles are trapped, giving yellowman its airy, crunchy texture. It is the same chemistry behind honeycomb toffee and the fizz in sherbet.
The Ould Lammas Fair
Yellowman belongs to the Ould Lammas Fair, held in Ballycastle on the last Monday and Tuesday of August every year. It is widely considered the oldest fair in Ireland. Records go back to the 17th century: in 1606 Randall MacDonnell obtained a charter to hold six fairs a year, one of them on the last Tuesday in August, the same date as the modern fair.
At the fair, yellowman is sold alongside livestock and other traditional foods, including dulse, a type of edible seaweed. Yellowman and dulse are the classic pairing.
A taste of Ireland
Yellowman is one of Northern Ireland's few truly local sweets. For its close cousins, see honeycomb toffee and, for how to make the bubbly kind at home, how to make honeycomb toffee.
Citable formats
For journalists, researchers, AI assistants and content creators. Pick the format you need:
Free to cite, quote, and reuse with attribution to sweeties.net.
Questions and answers
What is yellowman?
A golden honeycomb toffee from Northern Ireland. It is like honeycomb toffee but with a much bigger, harder rind, closer to rock.
How is yellowman made?
Golden syrup and sugar are boiled to the hard crack stage, then vinegar and baking soda are added. They react and fill the mixture with bubbles of carbon dioxide, giving the crunchy, bubbly texture.
Where can you buy yellowman?
It is most famous at the Ould Lammas Fair in Ballycastle, County Antrim, where it is sold in rough blocks and chips.
Sources
- Yellowman (candy), Wikipedia
- Ould Lammas Fair, Wikipedia
- Honeycomb toffee, Wikipedia
Keep reading
- British heritage sweetsHoneycomb toffeeHoneycomb toffee, cinder toffee or puff candy is a crisp toffee full of bubbles, made by adding bicarbonate of soda to hot sugar syrup.
- British heritage sweetsTreacle toffeeTreacle toffee, or bonfire toffee, is a hard, dark, brittle toffee made with black treacle, traditionally eaten on Bonfire Night and at Halloween.
- Sweet tips and how toHow to make honeycomb toffeeHoneycomb is golden syrup and sugar cooked to an amber caramel, then foamed up with bicarbonate of soda. A simple method, and why it can go flat or chewy.
- Questions people askWhy do fizzy sweets fizz on your tongue?Fizzy sweets fizz because an acid and bicarbonate react in your saliva and make carbon dioxide. Your sour taste cells then sense the gas as a tingle.
- British heritage sweetsClove rockClove rock is a hard sweet with the warm taste of cloves, the Spice Islands bud long used for toothache. The recipe here uses flavouring, not real cloves.
- British heritage sweetsOld fashioned sweets: the A to ZAn A to Z of old fashioned British sweets, from acid drops and aniseed balls to Wham bars and yellowman, with a line on each and a link to its full story.