Skip to main content
Preserve

Observations on Preserves

A syrup made from sugar, spring water, and egg white for use in preserves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Observations on Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine 6 pounds of sugar with 5 pints of spring water in a preserving pan.

  2. Lightly beat the egg white and mix it into the sugar and water mixture.

  3. Set the pan over low heat and stir until the sugar is nearly dissolved.

  4. Once dissolved, allow the mixture to rise without disturbance for 5 minutes.

  5. Remove from heat and skim off any scum that forms on the surface.

  6. If necessary, add a cup of cold water to help clarify the syrup.

  7. Let the syrup stand for a couple of minutes, then strain it for 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

Sugar
Forms the sweet base of the syrup and sets its body once dissolved and cooled.
Egg white
Binds impurities as it heats, so they rise as scum that can be skimmed off for clarity.

The step that matters

Allowing the mixture to rise without disturbance. When the syrup comes up to the boil, the egg white coagulates and carries impurities to the surface. Stirring at this point breaks up the forming crust and mixes the scum back in, leaving the syrup cloudy.

“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.

You might also like

Green Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding64 recipesCornmeal mushCornmeal mush12 recipes