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Syrup of Cloves, &C

A syrup made by boiling cloves in water, clarifying with egg whites, and sweetening with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Syrup of Cloves, &C

Ingredients

Directions

Make the clove infusion

  1. In a stewpan, combine 1 quart of boiling water and ¼ pound of cloves.

  2. Cover the pan and let it boil gently for 30 minutes.

  3. Drain the cloves and add 2 pounds of loaf sugar to 1 pint of the liquid.

Clarify and finish

  1. Whisk the egg whites with a little cold water and add to the mixture to clarify.

  2. Simmer until it thickens into a strong syrup.

  3. Preserve in tightly corked vials.

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).

  2. Clove + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Clove + eggtop 35% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,584 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

Clove and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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

Cloves
Provide the main aromatic flavour that the syrup carries.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the liquid and thickens it into a syrup as it simmers.
Egg whites
Bind impurities during heating so they can be removed, clarifying the syrup.

The step that matters

Adding the egg whites to clarify. Egg white proteins coagulate as the mixture heats and trap cloudy particles. Whisking them in fully and letting the mixture come up to heat lets the particles collect, leaving a clearer syrup.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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