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Clarified Sugar, for Preserves, and Other Uses

A clarified sugar syrup made by boiling sugar with water and egg whites, then skimming and straining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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, for Preserves, and Other Uses

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix egg whites with water and beat until frothy.

  2. Pour two-thirds of the water over the sugar and let it melt.

Clarify the syrup

  1. Heat the mixture until it rises and boils.

  2. Add more water and reduce the heat to control boiling.

  3. Skim off the scum.

  4. Repeat boiling and skimming until clear.

  5. Remove from heat and strain the syrup through a warm, damp napkin.

Finish

  1. Add fruit to the syrup.

  2. Boil until tender, or serve immediately without boiling.

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

Sugar
Forms the syrup and provides sweetness and body for the finished clarified syrup.
Egg whites
Coagulate when heated, trapping impurities so they can be skimmed off as scum.

The step that matters

Skimming off the scum while boiling. Impurities rise to the surface as the syrup boils. Removing them as they form, and repeating until the syrup is clear, keeps the final syrup transparent and clean-tasting. Reducing the heat helps control the boil so the foam can be skimmed cleanly.

“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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