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Syrup of Cloves, &C

A syrup made by simmering cloves in boiling water, then adding sugar and clarifying with whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Syrup of Cloves, &C

Ingredients

Directions

Make the clove infusion

  1. Combine boiling water and cloves in a stewpan.

  2. Cover and simmer gently for 30 minutes.

Make the syrup

  1. Drain the cloves and add 2 pounds of loaf sugar to 1 pint of the liquid.

  2. Whip the egg whites and mix them in to clarify the syrup.

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).

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

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

  3. Clove + eggtop 35% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,584 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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
Provide the main aroma and flavour, released into the water during simmering.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and body, making the syrup thick and preserving it.
Egg whites
Bind to impurities and rise to the surface when heated, clarifying the syrup.

The step that matters

Whip the egg whites and mix them in to clarify the syrup.. Egg white proteins coagulate when heated and trap suspended particles, which then rise as a scum that can be skimmed off. Adding them to a syrup that is not yet hot, and whipping them enough to distribute evenly, helps the clarification work.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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