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To Clarify Sugar

A method to clarify sugar by dissolving it in water and removing impurities with egg whites.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Dissolve the sugar

  1. In a brass pan, combine ½ cup water and the whites of two eggs for 4 pounds of sugar.

  2. Add the sugar and pour in another ½ cup of water.

  3. Let it sit to soften, then heat on the fire.

  4. Stir until the sugar is completely dissolved.

Clarify and skim

  1. Once boiling and foam rises, add another ½ cup of water and boil a little longer.

  2. Remove from heat, let settle, skim off the foam using a hair sieve, and return the syrup to the fire.

  3. Boil for a few more minutes, then let it settle again and remove the foam.

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. Sugar + eggtop 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

Sugar
Provides the sweetness and body of the finished syrup.
Egg whites
Coagulate when heated, trapping impurities so they rise as foam that can be skimmed off.

The step that matters

Letting the syrup settle before skimming. Impurities rise and collect as foam while the syrup is hot. Letting it settle before skimming lets the foam gather on the surface, so it lifts off cleanly. Stirring or skimming too early mixes the foam back in and leaves 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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