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 ↓
Clarifying Loaf Sugar
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Break the sugar into small pieces and place in a large copper pan.
Add 5 cups of water to the sugar.
Beat the egg whites until frothy and mix them into the sugar and water.
Clarify
Heat the mixture until it begins to boil, adding cold water to prevent overflow.
Allow the mixture to rise three times, cooling it with cold water each time.
On the fourth rise, skim off the scum until no more appears.
Strain the sugar through a fine 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.
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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
- Egg whites
- Coagulate when heated, trapping impurities so they can be skimmed off and the syrup clarified.
- Loaf sugar
- Forms the syrup base; sweetness and body of the clarified sugar.
- Ivory black
- Adsorbs colouring and impurities from the syrup, decolourising it.
The step that matters
Skimming the scum on the fourth rise. Skimming must continue until no more scum forms, because leftover coagulated impurities remain in the syrup and cloud or discolour the final sugar.
“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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