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
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.
Beat the egg white and mix it with the sugar and water.
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, then skim it well on the fourth rise.
Strain the mixture through a sieve or cloth to remove impurities.
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.
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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 syrup that is clarified; it is the bulk of the finished liquid.
- Egg white
- Coagulates when heated and traps impurities so they can be skimmed off.
The step that matters
Skimming on the fourth rise. Impurities rise to the surface as the syrup boils. Skimming only after the fourth rise removes them cleanly, while earlier skimming would disturb the egg white raft that gathers them.
“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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