Cooking Sugar

In classic French pastry making, there are many, many solutions made by heating sugar and liquid together. The resulting syrups (sirops) are used for poaching fruit, moistening cakes, and making icings, buttercreams, meringues, glazes, fondants, caramels, and pâte à bombe mixtures. Some are thin syrups that are boiled just briefly to dissolve the sugar. Others are “cooked sugars” that are taken beyond the boiling point in order to evaporate the water content and concentrate the syrup for greater density and flavor.