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To Prevent Granulation in Boiling Sugar

A method to keep sugar smooth while boiling by adding small amounts of acid or fat and wiping pot sides.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Prevent Granulation in Boiling Sugar

Ingredients

Directions

  1. As the sugar boils, wipe the sides of the pot with a cloth wet in cold water.

  2. Add 5-6 drops of lemon juice or vinegar, or any small amount of acid or fat to keep the sugar smooth.

  3. Do not stir the sugar while it is boiling.

  4. Ensure the fat or acid is used in very small amounts to avoid spoiling the sugar.

  5. Keep the sides of the pot clean with the wet cloth.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + honeytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,327 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Lemon + honeytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,707 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Cream + honeytop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together738 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lemon juice or vinegar
Acid that interferes with sugar crystal formation, helping keep the syrup smooth.
Cream of tartar
Acid that inhibits sugar crystallization, keeping the syrup smooth and creamy.
Honey
Invert sugar that resists crystallization, keeping the syrup smooth.

The step that matters

Keep the sides of the pot clean. Stray sugar crystals on the pot walls can fall back into the boiling syrup and seed a chain reaction of crystallization. Wiping them away with a wet cloth dissolves them before they can spread through the batch.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, butter, honey):

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, honey. 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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