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Dessert

Sugar Boiler's Assistant

A spun sugar decoration of fine threads of caramelled sugar, spun inside an oiled mould and set over a custard or sweet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Wells, Robert · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and myrtle work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 39 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Sugar Boiler's Assistant

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sugar

  1. Take 1 pint of clarified sugar and 1 teaspoonful of lemon juice.

  2. Boil it in a small pan to the degree called caramelled.

  3. The moment the sugar is ready, take it off the heat and put the bottom of the pan in cold water. As soon as the water is warmed, take the pan out.

Spin the web

  1. Have ready a crocanth mould neatly oiled with sweet oil.

  2. Dip the shank of a teaspoon into the sugar at one side of the pan, take up a little sugar and throw the spoon backwards and forwards in the mould, leaving as fine a thread as possible.

  3. Continue until the mould is quite full, taking care there are no blotches and the threads are as fine as hair.

Finish and serve

  1. Take it out and cover it over a custard or any other sweet, and raise it by spinning light threads of sugar on the top if you please.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

61Calories
0 gProtein
0 gFat
16 gCarbs

Counts 2 of 3 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 2 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Myrtlenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Wells, Robert. 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. See the original page.

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. Lemon + myrtletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together39 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + myrtletop 38% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together32 recipes

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Clarified sugar
Forms the brittle glassy threads and the web itself once cooled.
Lemon juice
Adds a little acidity that helps keep the cooked sugar from crystallising.

The step that matters

Spinning the threads while the sugar is at the right stage. Sugar that is too hot or too cool will not form fine, flexible threads. Cooking to caramel stage and drawing the threads steadily keeps them thin and even instead of forming blotches or drips.

“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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