Pastry Foundations · Dessert
Sugar Syrup Through the Named Stages
- Intermediate
- 20 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with richness that coats and comforts.
Ingredients
- 500 g caster sugar
- 150 g water, 30 percent of the sugar
- 50 g liquid glucose, 10 percent of the sugar, or 1 g cream of tartar
- 1 litre iced water, for the cold water test and for shocking the pan
Equipment
Thermometer · Sheet pan
The skills inside
Steaming: basket, leaf and lidBlanching & shocking
Allergen screen
None found among the 14 screened.
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Stir sugar, water and glucose over low heat until every grain has dissolved and the syrup runs clear, then stop stirring for good.
- Cover for 2 minutes so the trapped steam washes the pan walls, then uncover, raise the heat and brush any stray crystals down with a wet brush. 2 min
- Read the stages as water leaves: thread at 110C (230F), soft ball at 115C (239F), firm ball at 120C (248F), hard ball at 125C (257F), soft crack at 140C (284F), hard crack at 150C (302F).
- Confirm by hand: a spoonful dropped into iced water rolls into a ball you can flatten between finger and thumb at 115C (239F), and shatters into brittle threads at 150C (302F).
- Past 160C (320F) the sugar starts to colour and no thermometer keeps up; pull at pale amber around 170C (338F) and dip the pan base in cold water to stop the run.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Blanching & shocking 76 recipes
- A large volume at a hard rolling boil, and enough of it that adding the food barely interrupts it; a pot that goes quiet has started stewing rather than blanching.
- Timed rather than watched, and short. This is an interruption in the cooking of something, not the cooking of it.
- The ice bath was made and standing beside the pot BEFORE anything went into the water, not started once the timer went off.
- It went straight into the ice water, fully submerged, and stayed until cold at the centre: a piece still warm inside is still cooking, and the arrest has not happened yet.
- Drained and dried afterwards rather than left sitting in water, so it does not carry that water into whatever it meets next.
Where it goes wrong The ice bath was not ready, so the food sat draining in a colander while its own residual heat carried on cooking it. By the time it cooled it was a stage past where it was pulled, and exact arrest is the entire reason for blanching rather than simply boiling.
Steaming: basket, leaf and lid 130 recipes
- Steam was running before the food went in: the water at a rolling boil and vapour coming steadily through the basket, rather than the whole thing warming up together.
- Nothing touches the water at any point: the food sits clear of it throughout, and the level neither drops enough to boil dry nor rises enough to wet it.
- The lid stayed on. Every lift costs the chamber its heat, and the number of lifts should be as close to none as the dish allows.
- Lifted out, the surface is glossy and plump with its colour heightened rather than dulled: greens brighter than they went in, not olive.
- Cooked through with the shape intact: it yields at the centre without having slumped or split, and there is no more than a spoonful of clean condensate beneath it.
Where it goes wrong The lid was loose or dripping and the condensate fell back onto the food, so it arrives waterlogged and pale with its seasoning washed down into the bottom of the dish.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Sauternes
- Also Right
- Demi-sec Champagne
- From the Taps
- Belgian tripel
- Zero-Proof
- Jasmine tea
The sweetness rule is absolute: the pour must be sweeter than the plate, and acid keeps it from cloying.
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