Humbug (sweet)

Humbugs are a traditional boiled sweet (hard candy) available in the United Kingdom, Ireland, South Africa, Canada, Australia, Zimbabwe and New Zealand. They are usually flavoured with peppermint and striped in two different colours (often black and white). In Australia, the black-and-white-striped humbugs may be aniseed flavoured. Humbugs may be cylinders with rounded ends wrapped in a twist of cellophane, or more traditionally tetrahedral, loose in a bag. Records of humbugs exist from as early as the 1820s, and they are referred to in the 1863 book Sylvia's Lovers as being a food from the North. The etymology is unknown.