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Clarify Sugar

A method to clarify sugar using fruit juice, producing a clear sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes. The science ↓

Clarify Sugar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sugar base

  1. Add the juice of 1 quart of currants to 1 pound of sugar in a preserving pan.

  2. Boil together until it reaches a jelly consistency, about 30 minutes.

Use the result

  1. For jelly, strain off the required amount and use the remainder as jam.

  2. Alternatively, clarify the sugar until all water evaporates, then add an equal weight of fruit.

  3. Boil for 20 minutes and check if it jellies; if not, continue 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. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Currants
Their juice supplies pectin and acid, which help the mixture set into a gel.
Sugar
Concentrates the mixture and binds water, helping it thicken and keep its shape.

The step that matters

Boiling until it jellies. Boiling drives off water until the sugar concentration, pectin and acid allow a gel to form. Stopping too early leaves the mixture runny, while boiling too long makes it stiff and grainy.

“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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