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Syrup Making

A syrup made by dissolving sugar in water, optionally with egg whites, and clarifying by removing scum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Syrup Making

Ingredients

Directions

Make the first syrup

  1. Combine 29 oz powdered sugar and 1 pint water in a pot.

  2. Heat gently, stirring until dissolved.

  3. Let sit for 24 hours.

  4. Remove any scum and pour off the syrup.

Make the second syrup

  1. Dissolve 24 lb sugar in 1 pint water over heat.

  2. Remove scum and strain while hot.

Clarify and finish

  1. Beat the whites of 2 eggs with enough water to make 3,000 parts.

  2. Add two‑thirds of the egg mixture to 600 parts sugar and sufficient water.

  3. Heat gently, stirring until dissolved without boiling.

  4. When it froths, reduce heat and gradually add the remaining egg mixture, removing scum as needed until the syrup reaches a specific gravity of 1.260.

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

Egg whites
Coagulate when heated, trapping and lifting impurities so they can be skimmed off as scum.
Refined sugar
Forms the sweet syrup base that the water dissolves into.

The step that matters

Heating the egg mixture to a froth. Egg whites must be added gradually once the syrup froths, with heat reduced. Boiling would cause the scum to break up and mix back into the syrup, leaving it cloudy.

“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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