Skip to main content
Dessert

To Clarify Loaf-Sugar

A method to clarify loaf sugar by boiling with water and egg white, then skimming and straining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Loaf-Sugar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the sugar into a copper pan that holds more than the required quantity.

  2. Add 3 cups of water for every 6 pounds of sugar and beat in the egg white.

Clarify

  1. Heat the mixture until it boils, then add a little cold water to prevent it from boiling over.

  2. Allow it to rise three times without skimming, then skim off the scum on the fourth rise.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve or cloth to remove impurities.

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

Loaf sugar
Forms the syrup that is clarified; it is the main body of the finished product.
Egg white
Binds to impurities as it heats, so they rise into scum that can be skimmed off.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum on the fourth rise. Skimming too early removes the clarifying foam before impurities have gathered in it, and skimming too late lets them fall back into the syrup. Timing the skim on the fourth rise keeps the clear liquid clean.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes