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 ↓
ClaryUd Syrup
Ingredients
Directions
Dissolve the sugar
Break the sugar into bits and place it in a clean, well-tinned stew-pan with the cold spring water.
Heat over moderate fire until the sugar dissolves.
Clarify and bottle
Add the beaten egg white to the sugar before it warms and stir well.
Once it boils, remove the scum and keep boiling until clear.
Strain through a clean napkin and store in a tightly sealed bottle.
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.
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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 lump sugar
- Provides the sweetness and body of the syrup.
- Egg white
- Coagulates as it heats, trapping impurities so they rise as scum to be skimmed off.
The step that matters
Adding the egg white before the syrup warms. The egg white must be stirred in cold so it disperses evenly. Its proteins set as the syrup heats, gathering suspended impurities into scum. If it is added to hot syrup, it can cook in clumps and clarify unevenly.
“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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