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Sugar Syrup

Appears in
Glorious French Food
Glorious French Food

By James Peterson

Published 2002

  • About

If you boil sugar in water, you’ll make sugar syrup. As you cook the syrup it goes through various stages, from a relatively light syrup of equal parts sugar and water (called simple syrup), used for moistening cakes; to “soft ball,” used for making Italian meringue; to “soft crack” and “hard crack,” used for making certain candies; and eventually, when all the water has evaporated and the sugar begins to brown, to caramel (see for more about making caramel).

You can use a candy thermometer to determine when a sugar syrup has reached the stage you want, but professional pastry cooks usually judge when their syrups are ready by dipping their fingers in the syrup and then immediately into a bowl of cold water. Since the mere thought of this is terrifying, I dip the handle end of a spoon into the syrup and then immediately into a bowl of cold water (but not ice water). I then pinch the more-or-less congealed syrup between thumb and forefinger and judge by its texture. Here are a few stages.
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