Rock Sugar, Coloured
Ingredients
Directions
Make the sugar
Boil the clarified sugar in a copper or earthenware pan over a clear fire until it reaches the crack stage.
Remove from heat and mix in the icing while stirring briskly with a skimmer.
If using the egg white mixture, combine sifted loaf sugar with the egg white until thick, then add to the sugar.
If coloring the rock sugar, mix in food coloring with the icing before adding it to the sugar.
Cool and break
Pour the mixture into a papered sieve to cool.
Once completely cool, break into pieces.
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
What each ingredient does
- Clarified sugar
- Forms the crystal mass that hardens into the rock sugar once cooled.
- Icing
- Adds fine sugar particles that seed crystallisation, giving a grainy, opaque texture.
The step that matters
Boil to the crack stage. Sugar must reach the crack stage, roughly 300°F, so that once cooled it sets hard and brittle. Undercooked sugar stays soft and sticky, while overcooked sugar turns bitter and browns.
“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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