[3] In 1883 Charles Eastick, an English chemist at the Abram Lyle & Sons refinery in Plaistow, east London, further formulated how sugar could be refined to make a preserve and sweetener for cooking, bringing it to its current recipe.

Charles and his brother John Joseph Eastick experimented with the refining process of the bitter molasses-brown treacle—hitherto a waste by-product of sugar refining—into an eminently palatable syrup with the viscosity, hue, and sweetness of honey.

[5] The name "golden syrup" in connection with molasses had occurred, however, as early as 1840 in an Adelaide newspaper, the South Australian.

[6] The tin bears a picture of the rotting carcass of a lion with a swarm of bees and the advertising slogan "Out of the strong came forth sweetness".

The slogan, chosen by Abram Lyle, is a reference to the Biblical story in chapter 14 of the Book of Judges in which Samson was travelling to the land of the Philistines in search of a wife.

During the journey he killed a lion, and when he passed the same spot on his return he noticed that a swarm of bees had formed a comb of honey in the carcass.

[8] While it is not known exactly why this image and slogan were chosen, Abram Lyle was a deeply religious man, and it has been suggested that they refer either to the strength of the Lyle company or the tins in which golden syrup is sold, or simply to the process of refining sweet syrup from bitter ("strong") treacle.

[citation needed] The free glucose and fructose present in golden syrups are more water-soluble than the original sucrose.

Water and sugar are stirred over heat until boiling, with citric acid added to enhance inversion of sucrose.

At this point much of the sucrose will have inverted to fructose and glucose, and caramelization will have created other chemicals in addition to darkening the color.

The sucrose-saturated content of the initial "green" syrup impedes sugar crystals from dissolving during the process of washing.

The purpose is to mix the green syrup with raw sugar crystals to form a "magma" of 8–10% moisture content at around 60–65° C, which is then washed with water in a centrifuge.

The final spent syrup remaining after the recovery process is sold as treacle (often called refiner's molasses in older texts).

In Germany, a similar product called Zuckerrübensirup (literally "sugar-beet syrup") is a popular spread, especially in the western part of the country around Cologne.