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Dessert

Clarified Sugar Syrup

A clarified sugar syrup made by dissolving refined sugar in water with egg whites and removing scum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Clarified Sugar Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break up or powder the sugar.

  2. Stir the egg whites gradually into the water.

  3. Mix the sugar with the water and egg whites in a porcelain kettle.

Clarify and boil

  1. Stir frequently while the sugar melts.

  2. Place the kettle over moderate heat.

  3. Let it boil.

  4. Carefully remove the scum as it rises.

  5. Add a little cold water if the syrup threatens to overflow.

  6. When it first boils hard, pour in ½ pint of cold water to control bubbles.

  7. Do not boil to candy height; keep the syrup liquid.

Cool and bottle

  1. Let it cool completely before bottling and sealing.

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

Double-refined loaf sugar
Provides all the sweetness and the body of the syrup.
Egg whites
Coagulate as they heat, trapping impurities so they rise as scum that can be skimmed off.
Clear spring or pump water
Dissolves the sugar to form the syrup base.

The step that matters

Do not boil to candy height. Sugar syrup concentrates as water evaporates; boiling too long raises the sugar concentration until it sets or crystallises instead of staying liquid. Keeping it liquid depends on controlling the boil and adding cold water when bubbling gets too vigorous.

“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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