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Dessert

Syrups for Candies

A simple syrup made from sugar, water, and egg white, boiled and skimmed to remove scum.

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 ↓

Syrups for Candies

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dissolve the sugar in cold water.

  2. Add the egg white and beat the mixture well.

  3. Heat the mixture until it boils, then remove from heat and skim off the scum.

  4. Return to heat, let it boil again, and add a few drops of cold water.

  5. Remove from heat and skim off the scum again; repeat until no scum rises.

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

Loaf sugar
Dissolves to form the syrup and provides the sweetness and body of the candy syrup.
Egg white
Its proteins coagulate when heated, trapping impurities so they rise as scum that can be skimmed off.
Cold water
Dissolves the sugar and forms the liquid base in which the syrup cooks down.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum after each boil. Egg white coagulates and carries impurities to the surface as scum. Removing it fully after each boil keeps the syrup clear, so it must be repeated until no more scum forms.

“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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