Why it works: Egg and sugar 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 ↓
Clarification of Sugar
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Beat the egg whites until frothy.
Gradually add water, using 1 quart for each egg white.
Add the broken sugar pieces to the water.
Clarify the sugar
Boil the mixture and skim off any foam.
Continue adding the remaining water gradually.
When the foam is very white, the sugar is clarified.
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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Egg + sugartop 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
- Egg whites
- As they heat and coagulate, they trap impurities and rise as foam that can be skimmed away.
- Sugar
- Provides the sweetness and is dissolved into the water to be purified into a clear syrup.
The step that matters
Boil the mixture and skim off any foam. As the egg whites cook, they trap impurities and form foam. Removing that foam as it rises lifts the impurities out, so the syrup stays clear rather than cloudy.
“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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