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Sauce

To Clarify Sugar for Preserving

Clarifies sugar by boiling with water and egg white.

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 for Preserving

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine 3 pounds of sugar, 1½ pints of water, and the white of 1 egg in a pot, then mix well.

Clarify

  1. Place the pot on the stove and bring to a boil, skimming off any foam that forms.

  2. After boiling for a few minutes, let it stand for 10 minutes.

  3. Skim off any remaining foam and then strain the mixture.

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
Forms the syrup base that the clarifying process purifies.
Egg white
Coagulates as it heats, trapping impurities so they rise as foam for skimming.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam while the syrup boils and stands. Impurities rise to the surface as foam. Removing it thoroughly before straining keeps the syrup clear, because any foam left behind can dissolve back in or cloud the final liquid.

“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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