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
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
In an earthen pan, beat the egg white with the water until frothy.
Pour the mixture into a copper kettle and set over a slow fire.
Clarify and strain
When it begins to boil, add a little more water and skim off the scum until the sugar is clear.
Sift the clarified sugar through a wet napkin or silk sieve into a clean vessel.
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.
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Egg white
- As it heats, it coagulates and traps impurities, which rise as scum that can be skimmed away.
- Fine sugar
- Forms the sweet body of the syrup once impurities have been removed.
The step that matters
Skim off the scum until the sugar is clear. Impurities collect on the surface as the mixture boils. If they are not skimmed off completely, they stay in the syrup and leave it cloudy or off-flavoured.
“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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