[Sca-cooks] re: Lemon Syrup

[Ted Eisenstein]

>You'd have to heat the sugar syrup long enough to boil the water and
>alcohol away for it to start to caramelize, so, simmering it for an hour
>or longer isn't going to do much. What you will get, if you are simmering
>it with the lid off and thus letting the water evaporate, is a syrup with
>rum flavor, but not a whole lot, if any, alcohol.
>
>By heating liquid with sugar in it, you can dissolve more sugar in it than
>you could if the liquid were cold. By this method you can also make a
>supersaturated solution, which is how rock candy is made. Make a
>supersaturated solution and introduce a catalyst that will cause the sugar
>to crystalize out.
>
>What you have now is most likely a *very* light sugar syrup with rum
>flavor and alcohol. If you are looking for a more concentrated syrup, you
>will have to cook it down.

. . . .errrrr. . . . I wasn't heating up rum, water, sugar, and mint; I was
heating up water and sugar, taking it off the flame, pouring it on the mint,
and then adding the rum.
So. . . what does cooking sugar and water longer do to it that not cooking
it very long does? You wind up with a more concentrated solution than you
would if you simply added sugar to water and stirred? You get it sweeter, in
essence?

Alban