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Dessert

Clarified Sugar Syrup

A clear syrup made by dissolving refined sugar with water and egg whites, then boiling until liquid.

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 or powder the sugar.

  2. Beat the egg whites to a strong froth.

  3. Stir the egg whites gradually into the water.

  4. In a porcelain kettle, mix the sugar with the water and egg whites.

  5. Stir frequently while the sugar melts.

Clarify and cook

  1. Place the kettle over moderate heat and let it boil.

  2. Carefully remove the scum as it rises to the top.

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

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

  5. Do not boil to candy height; the syrup should remain liquid.

Finish

  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
Dissolves into the water to make the syrup, providing all of its sweetness and body.
Egg whites
Coagulate when heated, trapping impurities so they rise as scum that can be skimmed off.

The step that matters

Do not boil to candy height. Boiling the syrup too far concentrates the sugar until it crystallises or hardens into candy. Stopping early keeps it pourable and stable for bottling.

“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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