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To Clarify Coarse Brown Sugar

A method to clarify coarse brown sugar by boiling with water, egg whites, and charcoal, then straining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 Coarse Brown Sugar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Combine brown sugar, water, and egg whites in a large pan.

  2. Add finely pounded charcoal to the pan, keep it on the fire, and let it boil.

  3. If the mixture rises too fast, add cold water.

Strain

  1. Strain the mixture through a bag until clear, repeating as necessary.

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

Brown sugar
Provides the sweetness and the bulk of the syrup.
Egg whites
Coagulate when heated and trap impurities so they can be strained out.
Charcoal
Adsorbs impurities and colour as it boils, so they can be strained out.

The step that matters

Adding cold water when the mixture rises too fast. Rising foam can boil over and be lost. Cold water briefly cools the pan and calms the boil, giving the egg whites time to coagulate and hold impurities for straining.

“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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