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 the syrup
Break the sugar into a copper pan that holds more than the required quantity.
Add 3 cups of water for every 6 pounds of sugar and beat in 1 egg white.
Clarify
Heat the mixture until it boils, then add a little cold water to prevent it from boiling over.
Allow it to rise three times without skimming.
Skim it well on the fourth rise, adding cold water each time until the white scum stops rising.
Strain the mixture through a sieve or cloth.
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.
-
Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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 bulk of the syrup and provides sweetness once dissolved in the water.
- Egg white
- Its proteins coagulate when heated, trapping impurities so they can be skimmed off as scum.
The step that matters
Skimming on the fourth rise. Skimming too early or too late leaves impurities in the syrup. Adding cold water at each rise makes the coagulated egg white and scum separate and float to the surface, where they can be removed cleanly.
“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 Cake431 recipes
Pound Cake373 recipes
Orange Bundt Cake349 recipes
Spice Cake344 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.