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Syrup Clarified for Keeping
Allow half a pint of water to each pound of refined loaf sugar, and the white of an egg to every four pounds. Break up the sugar, and pour the water upon it. Stir it until dissolved. Beat the white of an egg, and stir it into the syrup while it is still cold. Let it heat gradually, removing the scum as it rises. When perfectly clear, strain it into a napkin, and keep it in closely-stoppered bottles for use. This syrup will keep for some weeks. If less sugar were used than the quantity named the syrup would ferment.
A stock syrup for the store cupboard, clarified the old way with egg white. The method still works, but the vocabulary and the keeping instructions need translating.
- The proportionsHalf an imperial pint of water to a pound of sugar is about 1¼ US cups water to 2¼ cups granulated sugar. One egg white handles four pounds of sugar, so for a single pound use a quarter of a beaten white rather than trying to divide a raw egg by eye.
- Loaf sugarRefined loaf sugar came as a hard cone that had to be broken up with nippers, which is why the recipe says "break up the sugar". Ordinary granulated white sugar is the same thing already broken; caster dissolves faster still.
- Why the egg whiteBeaten white must go in while the syrup is cold, then be left alone. As the pan heats, the albumen coagulates and rises, carrying fine sediment with it as scum. Stirring or a hard boil breaks the raft up and clouds the syrup again.
- "Strain it into a napkin"Read this as strain it through a napkin — a scalded linen cloth or jelly bag over a bowl. Let it drip rather than squeezing, or the cloudiness comes straight back through.
- The line that mattersThe last sentence is the whole point: at this sugar-to-water ratio the syrup is concentrated enough to resist yeasts. Dilute it and it will ferment, so measure rather than approximating.
- Keeping it"Some weeks" presumes a cool larder; the recipe specifies only closely-stoppered bottles. Fill sterilised bottles or jars while the syrup is still very hot, cap at once, and refrigerate after opening; discard at any sign of haze, bubbles or mould.
- Yield and useA pound of sugar gives roughly a pint of finished syrup. It is a base, not a drink: for poaching fruit, moistening cakes, sweetening iced drinks and cordials, and as the starting point for sorbets and water ices.
Clarified syrup belongs to the section of Victorian cookery books that treats the kitchen as a small workshop, stocking basics in advance rather than making them to order. Sugar sold in the nineteenth century still carried traces of the refining process, and even the best loaf sugar could throw a faint cloud in solution — hence a clarifying step borrowed directly from the making of clear soups and calf's-foot jellies, where beaten egg white was the standard means of pulling fine particles out of a hot liquid. A bottle of it stood behind much else: fruit compotes, water ices, cake syrups, barley waters and sweetened drinks a household mixed itself. The warning against using less sugar is a reminder that preservation, not flavour, set the proportions.