Humbugs

Strongly mint-flavoured, plain, hard boiled sugar sweets. Usually with brown and pale stripes, often with a softer centre.


Mint humbugs
Photo: Ka Faraq Gatri

'Humbug' originally meant; 'a thing which is not really what it pretends to be; a deception'. It seems to have got transferred to the sweet around the early 19th Century. Mrs. Gaskell, in 'Sylvia's Lovers' of 1863 finds it necessary to explain the word; "He had provided himself with a paper of humbugs for the child- 'humbugs' being the north-country term for certain lumps of toffy, well-flavoured with peppermint."