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Dessert

Bilberry Syrup

A sweet syrup made from bilberries, sugar, water, and egg white, finished with a frothy egg shell.

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 ↓

Bilberry Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine loaf sugar and water in a saucepan.

  2. Boil for 15 minutes, stirring constantly.

Prepare the bilberry juice

  1. Boil bilberries in another saucepan for 30 minutes.

  2. Pass the bilberries through a jelly bag.

Finish and bottle

  1. Add the juice to the syrup.

  2. Whip the egg white and shell lightly.

  3. Add the whipped mixture to the syrup.

  4. Boil the syrup again for 3 minutes.

  5. Skim off the froth.

  6. Pour the syrup into bottles.

  7. Cork the bottles for future use.

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
Sweetens the syrup and, once dissolved and boiled, gives it a thick body.
Bilberries
Supply the juice that gives the syrup its flavour and deep colour.
Egg white
Coagulates when heated, trapping impurities so they can be skimmed off, leaving the syrup clear.

The step that matters

Adding the whipped egg white. Egg white coagulates as the syrup heats, trapping suspended particles into a froth that can be skimmed off, leaving the syrup clear. Whip only lightly, then boil and skim thoroughly so the froth is fully removed.

“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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