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To Clarify Sugar or Syrup

A method to clarify sugar or syrup by dissolving sugar, boiling, adding cold water, and filtering.

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 Sugar or Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the egg white until well mixed.

  2. Combine the sugar, water, and beaten egg white in a saucepan.

Cook the syrup

  1. Do not heat until the sugar is fully dissolved.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Add 1 teacup of cold water without stirring.

  4. Bring the mixture back to a boil.

Clarify and strain

  1. Remove from heat and let settle.

  2. Skim off the scum.

  3. Strain through a sieve to recover syrup.

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

Sugar
Provides the sweetness and body of the finished syrup.
Egg white
Coagulates when heated and traps impurities, which rise as scum so the syrup can be clarified.

The step that matters

Add 1 teacup of cold water without stirring. Cold water briefly stops the boil and cools the surface, so impurities gather and rise. Stirring would break up the coagulated egg white and mix the scum back into the syrup.

“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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