[Sca-cooks] re: Lemon Syrup

[Bronwynmgn at aol.com]

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[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
In a message dated 7/25/2001 12:46:52 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
Alban at socket.net writes:


> does heating the sugar/water solution for a long time really
> make a difference? Does it turn into a mild liquid caramel-type
> thing, or does it simply become hot sweet liquid, the same as
> what you'd get if adding sugar to cold water were *poof* suddenly
> hot?
>
>

With the syrups, you are using more sugar than water (as an example, the
standard sekanjabin recipe is 2.5 cups of water and 4 cups of sugar).  It is
simply impossible to dissolve that much sugar into cold water; the best you
can do is keep it in suspension by constant stirring.  When you heat it,
right about the boiling point, all of that sugar suddenly goes into solution,
and will then stay in solution when it's cooled.  Really neat kitchen
chemistry.  It's really obvious when it happens; you have this cloudy liquid
that you are stirring constantly, and suddenly, right about the point where
it boils, or a little after, the whole pot at once goes clear and sort of
glassy looking.  Simmering it after that drives off more water and makes the
syrup thicker, because the proportion of sugar to water gets higher.  The
lemon syrup does the same thing, even though lemon juice isn't clear to begin
with.  I get a kick out of watching it every time I make it.

Brangwayna Morgan