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To Clarify Sugar

A method to clarify sugar using water and egg white to remove impurities.

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 Sugar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Break the sugar into large lumps.

  2. Place the lumps in a clean preserving pan.

  3. Measure 3 quarts of spring water for syrup, or 2½ pints for candying.

  4. Beat the egg white lightly and mix it with the water.

  5. Pour the mixture over the sugar.

  6. Let it stand until nearly dissolved.

  7. Stir thoroughly.

Clarify

  1. Place over gentle heat without disturbing it until scum forms.

  2. Boil for five minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and skim off the scum.

  4. Return to heat.

  5. Add a little reserved cold water.

  6. Repeat skimming until clear.

  7. Strain through muslin or a thin cloth into a clean pan for further boiling.

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. Egg + syruptop 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

Sugar
Forms the sweet syrup that the clarified liquid is made from.
Egg white
Its proteins coagulate with heat and trap impurities, which rise as scum to be skimmed off.

The step that matters

Skimming the scum. Heat must stay gentle and the pan undisturbed so the coagulated egg white forms a firm raft that carries impurities to the surface. Stirring or vigorous boiling breaks the raft and mixes the impurities back in, leaving 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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