[Sca-cooks] re: Lemon Syrup

[Pixel, Queen of Cats]

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001, Ted Eisenstein wrote:

>
> >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

Sweeter by volume, and potentially more viscous. It sounds like what you
have right now is very sweet mint tisane with rum added. ;-)

Margaret