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Syrup of Cloves, Cinnamon, or Mace

A syrup made by boiling cloves, cinnamon, or mace in water, then adding powdered sugar, egg white, and rose or orange‑flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and rose work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 410 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Syrup of Cloves, Cinnamon, or Mace

Ingredients

Directions

Make the spice infusion

  1. In a small saucepan, combine the pounded cloves, cinnamon, or mace with boiling water.

  2. Boil for about 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the liquid through a fine sieve.

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve the powdered sugar in the strained liquid.

  2. Add the beaten egg white and a little rose or orange-flower water.

  3. Simmer gently until the syrup is clear.

Store

  1. Store in bottles, but do not cork tightly until completely cool.

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. Clove + rosetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together410 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + rosetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,584 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Clove + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Egg + rosetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,840 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Clove and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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

Cloves, cinnamon, or mace
Supplies the aromatic spice flavour that the boiling water extracts into the syrup.
Powdered sugar
Provides sweetness and the thick body of the syrup.
Beaten egg white
Binds fine particles and, when simmered, coagulates to help clarify the syrup.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the syrup is clear. Boiling hard or stirring can break up the egg white coagulum, leaving the syrup cloudy. Gentle heat lets the egg white rise and trap impurities so they can be skimmed or strained off.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, rose):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, rose. 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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