Skip to main content
Dessert

To Clarify Sugar for Syrup

A clarified sugar syrup made by dissolving sugar in water, boiling, adding water, and skimming scum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 for Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine the sugar, water, and beaten egg white in a lined saucepan.

  2. Heat the mixture until the sugar dissolves.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Add 1 teacup of water without stirring.

  5. Allow the mixture to reach boiling point again.

Clarify and finish

  1. Remove from heat and let it settle.

  2. Skim off any scum.

  3. The sugar will be 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
Dissolves into the water to form the syrup and provides its sweetness and body.
Egg white
Coagulates as it heats, trapping impurities so they rise to the surface for skimming.

The step that matters

Add 1 teacup of water without stirring.. Stirring breaks up the egg white raft that forms as the mixture heats and carries impurities back into the syrup. Adding water without stirring lets the raft stay intact so the scum can be removed cleanly.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes