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To Clarify and Boil Sugar

A method for clarifying sugar by boiling with water and egg, removing scum to produce clear syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Clarify and Boil Sugar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the sugar into large lumps and place it in a preserving pan.

  2. Add ½ cup of cold water per pound of sugar for syrup, or ⅓ cup per pound for candying.

  3. Mix the beaten egg with the water and pour it over the sugar.

Clarify and boil

  1. When the sugar is nearly melted, stir it well and place it over a gentle fire.

  2. Do not stir after the scum begins to rise; let it boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat, let it stand for 1-2 minutes, then carefully remove the scum.

  4. Return the pan to the heat; when the syrup begins to boil, add a little cold water.

  5. Boil until the scum rises, remove from heat, and skim off the scum again; repeat until clear.

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 + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Syrup + eggtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,995 recipes

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fine sugar
Forms the syrup and provides sweetness and the body of the finished syrup.
Egg
Its proteins coagulate with heat and trap impurities, which rise as scum that can be skimmed off.

The step that matters

Do not stir after the scum begins to rise. Stirring once scum forms breaks the coagulated egg particles and dissolved impurities back into the syrup, leaving it cloudy instead of clear.

“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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