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
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Combine the sugar, water, and beaten egg white in a pot.
Stir until the sugar dissolves.
Bring the mixture to a boil.
Remove the scum
When scum rises, add another ½ cup of cold water for each pound of sugar.
Continue boiling, tilting the pan to help remove the scum.
Once settled, skim off the scum with a sugar skimmer and strain it through a fine sieve.
Reboil and clarify
Return the syrup to the pot.
Boil and skim again.
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
- Sugar
- Dissolves into the syrup that is clarified, becoming the sweet base once impurities are removed.
- Egg white
- Coagulates when heated and traps impurities, which rise as scum that can be skimmed away.
The step that matters
Adding cold water when scum rises. Cold water cools the boiling syrup so remaining impurities coagulate and rise as scum, making them easier to skim off and leaving the syrup clearer.
“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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