To Clarify Sugar

Name: To Clarify Sugar
Ingredients: 1 pound sugar; 0.5 pint water; 2 egg whites

Source: Anonymous, 1846

History

"To Clarify Sugar" is a preparatory kitchen technique, not a distinct dish. In The Jewish Manual (London, 1846) the instruction reads in full: "Take the proportion of one pound of sugar to half a pint of water, with the whites of a couple of eggs; boil it up twice, then set it by for the impurities to rise to the top, and skim it carefully." It sits among the book's confectionary and preserving directions as a preliminary step for making sweets, icings, and preserves.

The method it describes was the ordinary way sugar was clarified. When beaten egg white is boiled with a sugar solution, the coagulating albumen traps the sugar's impurities into a scum that is skimmed off. This is the same principle long used in sugar refining, where the albumen "coagulated and entangled the mechanical impurities of the sugar, forming a scum that was constantly removed"; egg white, or "albumen... bound more impurities" and was scraped away. The Jewish Manual's recipe is a plain domestic rendering of this common technique.

The book itself is generally described as the earliest known English-language kosher Jewish cookbook, "an English-language volume published in 1846." Its title page names no author — it is "Edited by a Lady" — and it was "published anonymously under the name 'A Lady' and is widely attributed to Lady Judith Montefiore," though "definitive proof has never been established." The Montefiore attribution should therefore be treated as traditional rather than certain.

Beyond this, the historical record consulted does not document who prepared clarified sugar in this way, where this particular recipe came from, or any line of transmission for it. There is no evidence that clarifying sugar carried social, class, or status significance; it was a routine kitchen preparation.

Ingredients

1 pound sugar
0.5 pint water
2 egg whites

Instructions

Combine the sugar and water with the egg whites. Bring to a boil twice. Set the mixture aside to allow impurities to rise to the top, then skim them off carefully.