Clarified Sugar
INGREDIENTS.- 2 lbs. of sugar, 1 pint of water, 1 egg. AVERAGE COST, 7d.
Beat the egg (the white only), and put it, with the water and sugar, into a preserving-pan. When the sugar has dissolved, put the pan on the fire, and, when it boils, throw in a cup of cold water. Bring it (without stirring) to boiling point again; then place the pan by the side of the fire for the syrup to settle. Remove all the scum, and the sugar will be ready for use.
TIME.-20 minutes for the sugar to dissolve, 5 minutes to boil. Clove Liqueur. INGREDIENTS.lb. of cloves, 1/4 lb. of coriander seed, 1/2 lb. of , 1 quart of spirit.
Bruise the cloves and coriander seed, and infuse the whole of the ingredients for a month; after which, strain and bottle.
Two entries have run together here, and the stray heading "Cocoa-nut Palm" belongs to a neighbouring article, not to the syrup. What follows is a confectioner's clarified sugar syrup and a household clove cordial.
- The hinge: do not stir once it boilsThe beaten egg white coagulates as the syrup heats and carries the impurities up as scum; the cup of cold water checks the boil and brings that scum to the surface in a raft. Stirring breaks the raft and disperses the sediment back through the syrup, which is the one way to fail at this.
- What clarifying was forNineteenth-century loaf and moist sugars carried fragments of lime, gum and vegetable matter from refining. Modern granulated sugar is already pure, so egg-white clarification is a period technique rather than a necessity — worth doing to understand it, not to improve the syrup.
- MeasuresAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz (about 570 ml), not the US 16. A pint of water weighs 20 oz, so two pounds of sugar to it gives a heavy syrup at roughly 1.6:1 sugar to water by weight, the confectioner's stock syrup for glazing, bottling fruit and moistening cakes.
- Preserving-panA wide, unlined copper or heavy brass pan with a broad surface. Any wide, heavy-bottomed stainless saucepan does the same work; the width matters because it makes skimming easy.
- "By the side of the fire"On a range this meant the cooler edge of the hob, where the pan sits below a simmer without cooling entirely. Off the heat, or the lowest gas setting, achieves it. The syrup needs a few undisturbed minutes for the scum to consolidate before you lift it off with a skimmer.
- The times are optimisticTwenty minutes to dissolve assumes the sugar sits in cold water while the fire builds. Five minutes of boiling is enough here — this syrup is not being taken to a sugar stage, and prolonged boiling will drive it towards thread and beyond.
- StorageBottle hot into scalded jars or bottles and keep refrigerated. A syrup this concentrated resists spoilage but will eventually throw mould at the surface if kept warm.
- The clove liqueur is incompleteThe ingredient list has lost the weight of the cloves and the name of the third ingredient, though its weight (1/2 lb.) survives. Do not guess at it; the proportions of a cordial this strongly spiced matter. 'Spirit' is left unspecified in the text. The month-long cold infusion itself is sound, and no distillation is involved.
- CostSevenpence is pre-decimal currency, from a period when sugar was a significant household expense rather than an afterthought.
Clarifying sugar was a routine step in the professional confectioner's day before industrial refining made it redundant. Raw and partly refined sugars carried enough non-sugar matter to cloud a syrup and spoil a clear jelly or a bright glaze, and egg white — whose albumen sets into a mesh as it heats and traps fine particles — was the standard remedy, the same principle used to clear consommé and to fine wine. That Mrs Beeton's compilers thought a domestic reader needed the instruction says something about the period kitchen, where preserving fruit, potting, candying and bottling were all household work rather than purchases. The clove cordial beside it belongs to the same tradition of home-made ratafias and spiced spirits, made by steeping bruised spices in spirit for weeks — cheap, keepable, and served in very small glasses.