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To Clarify Sugar, or Carmel

A method to clarify sugar into caramel by boiling with water and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

To Clarify Sugar, or Carmel

Ingredients

Directions

Clarify the sugar

  1. Combine 2 quarts of water and 4 pounds of loaf sugar in a preserving pan.

  2. Heat the mixture.

  3. Add the beaten egg whites mixed with ½ pint of water.

  4. Once the syrup boils, skim it clean.

  5. Simmer until perfectly clear.

Use the clarified sugar

  1. To clarify sugar for caramel, use a small amount of water and practice to learn the desired strength.

  2. Pour the clarified sugar over a mold greased with sweet oil.

  3. Use a fork dipped in the sugar to sprinkle it over cakes.

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

Loaf sugar
Forms the syrup that caramelises into the finished caramel sugar.
Egg whites
Coagulate when heated, trapping impurities so they can be skimmed off the syrup.

The step that matters

Simmer until perfectly clear. Sugar syrup must be simmered gently after skimming so the coagulated egg white and impurities settle and clear. Cooking too hard or skimming too late leaves the syrup 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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