Why it works: Egg and sugar 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
Make the syrup
Whisk the egg white in a large stewpan or preserving pan.
Add water until the pan is half full and frothy.
Stir in the broken sugar and heat until completely dissolved.
Clarify and strain
Remove the spoon and let it boil, skimming off any dirty scum that appears.
Once clear, strain through a silk sieve or jelly bag.
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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Egg + sugartop 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
- Egg white
- Its proteins coagulate when heated and trap impurities, which rise as scum to be skimmed off.
- Broken sugar
- Dissolves in water to form the syrup that is clarified and strained.
The step that matters
Skimming off the scum while the syrup boils. Impurities bound by the cooked egg white rise to the surface as scum. Leaving them in the pan lets them cloud the syrup, so skim them off as they appear until the syrup runs 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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