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To Clarify Loaf-Sugar

A process to clarify loaf sugar by boiling, skimming, and straining to produce clear sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 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 it well on the fourth rise, adding cold water each time until the white scum stops rising.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve, cloth strainer, or flannel bag.

  4. Save the scum for later use.

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, providing the sweet base of the finished sugar.
Egg white
Coagulates as it heats, trapping impurities so they rise as scum that can be skimmed off.

The step that matters

Skimming on the fourth rise. Skimming too early, or letting the syrup rise without control, leaves impurities in the sugar. Adding cold water at each rise calms the boil so the coagulated egg white and scum separate cleanly at the surface.

“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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