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Clarified Sugar, or Refined Common Syrup

A syrup made by clarifying sugar with egg white and water, then boiling and skimming to produce a clear sweet liquid.

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

Clarified Sugar, or Refined Common Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Beat the egg white in a bowl with 3 ounces of water until frothy.

  2. Mix in 3 ounces of sugar and the remaining 3 ounces of water.

  3. Place the mixture in a saucepan over medium heat and stir until the sugar melts.

  4. Remove from heat as soon as it begins to boil and scum rises.

Clarify and store

  1. Let it sit for 30 minutes to allow the scum to settle.

  2. Skim off the scum with a skimmer.

  3. Return the syrup to the heat and boil for at least 15 minutes, skimming constantly.

  4. Strain the syrup through a flannel bag until clear and store in bottles.

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. Egg + sugartop 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

Egg white
Its proteins coagulate when heated, trapping impurities so they rise as scum that can be skimmed off.
Sugar
Dissolves into the water to form the syrup that is clarified and stored.

The step that matters

Removing the scum while boiling. Impurities bound by the coagulated egg white rise to the surface as scum. Removing the pan at the first boil and skimming thoroughly keeps the syrup clear; letting it boil too hard can cause the scum to break up and cloud the syrup again.

“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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