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To Clarify and Boil Sugar

A method for clarifying sugar by boiling it with water and egg white to produce a clear syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

To Clarify and Boil Sugar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

  2. For syrup, add 6 cups of cold water for every 12 lbs of sugar; for candying, use 2 cups of water.

  3. Beat the egg white and mix it with the water, then pour over the sugar.

  4. Once the sugar is nearly melted, stir well.

  5. Place the mixture over gentle heat.

Clarify and skim

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

  2. Remove from heat.

  3. Let it stand for 1-2 minutes.

  4. Carefully remove the scum.

  5. Return to heat.

  6. When boiling, add a little cold water to help with scum removal.

  7. Repeat skimming until the syrup is 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 + 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

Fine sugar
Dissolves in water to form the syrup that the finished product is built from.
Egg white
Coagulates when heated, trapping impurities so they rise as scum that can be skimmed off.

The step that matters

Do not stir after the scum begins to rise. Stirring breaks up the forming scum and mixes impurities back into the syrup, so it stays cloudy. Letting it boil undisturbed lets the coagulated egg white lift the impurities to the surface where they can be removed.

“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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