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 ↓
To Clarify Sugar for Sweetmeats
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Break the sugar into large lumps and place it in a bowl with the water.
Heat the mixture over the fire until it dissolves.
Clarify
Add the whipped egg white and let it boil.
When it begins to rise, add a little cold water to check the boiling.
Once it rises a second time, remove it from the heat and let it sit for 15 minutes.
Skim off the black scum that forms on top.
Quickly pour the syrup into a vessel, leaving the sediment behind.
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
- Sugar
- Forms the sweet syrup that the clarified liquid is made from.
- Egg white
- Its proteins coagulate when heated, trapping impurities so they can be skimmed off and removed.
The step that matters
Skimming off the scum before pouring. Egg white traps impurities as it heats and rises. If the syrup is disturbed or poured carelessly, the trapped sediment and scum mix back in, leaving the syrup 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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