Why it works: Lemon and barley work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 484 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓
Clarified Sugar
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the syrup
Break sugar into large lumps and place in a preserving pan.
For syrup, add 1 pint of cold water for each pound of sugar; for candying, add ⅓ cup of cold water per pound.
Beat the egg and mix it with the water, then pour over the sugar.
When the sugar is nearly melted, stir well and place over gentle heat.
Clarify by skimming
Do not stir once the scum begins to rise; let it boil for 5 minutes.
Remove from heat, let it stand for 1-2 minutes, then carefully remove the scum.
Return the pan to the heat; when boiling, add a little cold water.
Continue boiling until the scum rises, then remove from heat and skim again.
Repeat until the syrup is clear and ready for use.
Finish and use
To test for candying, take a little sugar between your thumb and finger; it should stretch into threads.
For barley-sugar, add a few drops of essence of lemon, pour onto a broad dish, and roll into sticks when edges harden.
For caramel or spun sugar, oil a mold, draw out sugar in threads, let cool, and cover your fruit or tart.
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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Lemon + barleytop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together484 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together44,316 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sugar + barleytop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together755 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
- Sugar
- Forms the syrup base that is clarified and later cooked into candy, caramel or barley-sugar.
- Egg
- Its proteins bind impurities and rise with the scum, so they can be skimmed off for a clear syrup.
The step that matters
Do not stir once the scum begins to rise. Stirring breaks the coagulated egg and impurity layer and mixes it back into the syrup, leaving it cloudy. Letting it boil undisturbed lets the scum float so it can be removed cleanly.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, barley):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Figfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, barley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
“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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