Sugar Cooking

Appears in

Chocolates and Confections: Formula, Theory, and Technique for the Artisan Confectioner

By Peter Greweling and Culinary Institute of America

Published 2007

About

Theory: Boiling Point of Cooking Syrup

It is a common occurrence that the temperature of the boiling syrup remain at or below approximately 106°C/223°F for quite some time before it begins to steadily rise. Why does the temperature of cooking syrup climb so slowly at first and then much more rapidly? When the syrup reaches 106°C/223°F, the solution becomes saturated, and the temperature rises more rapidly, actually accelerating as it cooks. If 1 kilogram/2.2 pounds of sugar were combined with 200 grams/7 ounces of water and cooked, it would quickly reach 106°C/223°F (saturation) and would continue cooking relatively quickly beyond that temperature. If the same kilogram of sugar were combined with a kilogram of water, the syrup would take much longer to become saturated. Once it reached 106°C/223°F, however, that sugar would cook just as quickly as the batch that began with less water. All the extra cooking time for the batch of sugar with the kilogram of water would have been spent removing water to reach the point of saturation. Once saturation is reached, the syrups would cook at the same rate. This is the reason the confectioner uses a minimum of water to dissolve sugar for cooking, so as not to waste time waiting for a syrup to reach saturation and for the temperature to rise.

The higher the sugar content of a syrup, the higher its boiling temperature is. Pure water boils at 100°C/212°F; an 80-percent sugar solution boils at 110°C/230°F. When the solution reaches 98 percent sugar, the boiling point is raised to 155°C/311°F. Early in cooking, a large amount of water is present in the syrup; much of this water must be removed in order to noticeably increase the percentage of sugar and therefore raise the boiling point. It takes time to remove this water. Later in cooking, a smaller amount of water remains in the syrup; as a result, removing less water brings about a larger corresponding increase in the percentage of sugar and in the boiling point. Therefore, the boiling point rises quickly. The less water that remains in the syrup, the more quickly the sugar percentage increases, and the faster the temperature rises.

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In this section

Stages of sugar cooking

Preventing crystallization

Technique Theory: Standard Wet-Sugar Cooking

Technique Theory: Standard Dry-Sugar Cooking

Part of

Noncrystalline Confections

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