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 ↓
Clakipied Syrup
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Put the sugar into a clean pan with the water.
Stir until the sugar is dissolved.
Clarify and cook
Set over moderate heat and add the beaten egg white before the mixture warms.
Once boiling, remove the scum and keep boiling until clear.
Strain and store
Strain through muslin and let cool.
Bottle and cork well for storage.
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
- Broken loaf sugar
- Provides the sweetness and the bulk of the syrup.
- Egg white
- Its proteins set with heat and gather impurities, which rise as scum that can be removed.
The step that matters
Adding the egg white before the mixture warms. Adding the beaten white to cold syrup spreads it evenly through the liquid. As the syrup heats and boils, the egg white's proteins set and collect impurities, which then rise as scum for removal. Adding it late would leave impurities behind.
“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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