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Sugar, Clarified, for Syrup
INGREDIENTS. - To every lb. of sugar allow pint of water and the white of an egg.
SUPPER.
Put the ingredients into a lined saucepan or preserving pan, and when the sugar has dissolved, put the pan on the fire. When it boils put in a teacupful of cold water, and bring it to the boiling point again, but do not stir after adding the water. Draw the pan to the side of the fire for the preparation to settle, carefully remove the scum, and the sugar will be ready. If the scum be put on a sieve over a basin, what sugar runs from it can be boiled up again and strained.
TIME.-20 minutes for the sugar to dissolve, 5 minutes to boil.
A working syrup base rather than a dish in itself, used across the preserving and confectionery chapters. The method is old-fashioned egg-white clarification, which still works exactly as described.
- The missing fractionThe line reads "allow pint of water" — a fraction appears to have dropped out in printing, and the proportion given in Beeton's clarified-sugar entries is generally half a pint (about 10 fl oz / 285 ml) to the pound of sugar. Rather than guess, work from the ratio you want: half a pint of water to a pound of sugar is roughly 3 parts sugar to 2 parts water by weight, a fairly heavy syrup.
- "SUPPER"Almost certainly a corruption of MODE, the heading Beeton normally uses for the method. Nothing to do with the evening meal.
- How the egg white worksBeat the white lightly and add it to the cold sugar and water before any heat goes on. As the syrup heats, the albumen coagulates and rises, dragging up dust, plant fibre and other impurities from unrefined sugar into a grey raft of scum. Modern granulated sugar is already pure enough that this step is largely cosmetic — its remaining value is clarity in a jelly or a fruit syrup.
- The cold water trickAdding a teacupful (a Victorian teacupful is usually reckoned at about a quarter-pint, 5 fl oz) of cold water at the boil checks the rise and lets the coagulated scum consolidate rather than break up and disperse. This is why the instruction not to stir afterwards matters: one stir folds the raft back into the syrup and the batch will not clear.
- "Draw the pan to the side of the fire"On a range this meant moving the pan off the hottest plate to a cooler one, keeping it just below a simmer. On a modern hob, drop to the lowest setting for five minutes or so and leave it alone while the scum sets.
- Lined saucepanBeeton means tin-lined copper — bare copper or iron would discolour the syrup. Any heavy stainless or enamelled pan does the job now.
- Timing and stageTwenty minutes to dissolve plus five to boil produces a thin clarified syrup, not a candy stage. If you need it for preserving or sorbet, carry on boiling and check with a thermometer: around 100–103°C for a light syrup, and roughly 106–113°C for what confectioners call the thread stage, depending on whether a small or large thread is wanted.
- Yield and keepingA pound of sugar with half a pint of water gives roughly 500 ml of syrup. Strain through muslin, cool, and keep refrigerated; a heavy syrup lasts months, a thinner one a few weeks before it clouds.
Clarifying sugar with egg white is far older than Beeton and belongs to the era before industrial refining, when even loaf sugar carried enough molasses residue, cane fibre and grit that a confectioner could not make a clear jelly or a bright glacé. The technique is the same one behind consommé raft clarification, and it is often said to have been common in sugar-boiling houses and in the still-rooms of large households. Recipes of this kind persisted in print for decades because domestic cooks bought sugar of very variable quality — loaf, lump, moist and raw all sat on the grocer's shelf at different prices.