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Sauce

To Clarify Sugar

A method for clarifying sugar by boiling and skimming.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Break the sugar into large lumps.

  2. In a preserving pan, combine the sugar with 1 pint of water, reserving ½ cup of water.

  3. Do not heat until the sugar is nearly dissolved.

  4. Once it boils, add the reserved ½ cup of water.

  5. Let it rise again.

Clarify

  1. Remove the pan from the heat.

  2. Let it settle.

  3. Skim off the scum using a sieve.

  4. Return any liquid back to the pan.

  5. Boil again.

  6. Skim once more; it is now ready for 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

Sugar
Forms the sweet syrup that the clarifying process purifies.
Egg white
Is beaten into the syrup to help draw impurities up as scum for skimming.

The step that matters

Do not heat until the sugar is nearly dissolved.. Heating too early can scorch or crystallise undissolved sugar and leave a cloudy syrup, so the sugar should dissolve fully before the pan reaches a boil.

“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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