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To Clarify Sugar for Compotes

A method for clarifying sugar by dissolving it in water and egg white, then boiling and removing impurities.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

To Clarify Sugar for Compotes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the sugar into small lumps.

  2. Place the sugar in an untinned copper pan.

  3. Whisk the cold water with the egg white.

  4. Add the mixture to the sugar.

  5. Stir until the sugar is completely dissolved.

Heat and clarify

  1. Heat the pan on the fire.

  2. Stir with an untinned copper spoon until it begins to boil.

  3. Remove the pan to the side of the stove.

  4. Occasionally add another pint of cold water as it continues to boil.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fine loaf sugar
Forms the syrup, providing sweetness and the body of the clarified sugar.
Egg white
Its proteins coagulate when heated, trapping impurities so they can be skimmed off the syrup.
Cold water
Dissolves the sugar into a syrup and is added in stages to cool the boil.

The step that matters

Remove the pan to the side of the stove. Once the syrup boils, the egg white must coagulate and rise with impurities. Keeping the pan off the direct heat lets it simmer gently, so the coagulated matter settles and is not broken up and stirred back into the syrup.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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