Can you overcook syrup?
Reader Jenni asks whether a candy syrup is usable for anything else after it’s overcooked, i.e., once soft ball syrup is cooked to, say, firm ball syrup. The answer, Jenni, is that you can fix an overcooked candy syrup by simply adding more water to it. For there’s really no “cooking” going on in a candy syrup that contains only sugar and water. Proteins aren’t coagulating, starches aren’t gelling, fats aren’t breaking down, nothing like that is going on. Indeed when you boil a sugar syrup, as long as it’s below the caramelization temperature, only one thing happens: its water content goes down. Seen in that light a sugar syrup’s temperature isn’t so much a measure of how hot it is — though it certainly is that — it’s a measure of water content. Soft ball syrup is soft because its relatively high water content makes it pliable. Hard crack is hard and brittle because it has a good deal less water and is so very rigid.
Add a few drops of water to a boiling sugar syrup and its temperature will drop instantly, not because the water is spreading coolness around, but because the water content of the syrup has just increased. Pretty cool huh? So if you overshoot the mark on your candy syrup don’t fret, just carefully add a little water and keep cooking. As long as it isn’t caramel yet, you can easily save it. Thanks for the question, Jenni!
Recipes for meringue-based frostings specify a precise temperature for the sugar syrup and then recommend pouring the syrup from the pan into a measuring cup for easier adding to the whipped egg whites. I wonder about the syrup temperature dropping before it meets the eggs. If temperature is only a function of water content, does that mean the syrup temperature at contact is irrelevant?
GREAT question, LML. The answer is that as long as the syrup is warm enough that it flows out of the container and into the whipped whites in the first place, its temperature is indeed irrelevant. At least it’s irrelevant to the performance of the syrup and the frosting in general. A lot of people like to think that the function of a hot syrup is to kill microbes in egg foam. Unfortunately that’s not the case. It will kill some microbes but not all of them, not by any means.
Does that answer your question?
– Joe
Yes, thank you. With this better understanding of temperature control I have more enthusiasm for same-day making of 238 degree Italian meringue, 235 degree Boiled icing, Seven-minute icing and Swiss meringue to see how they vary.
Let me know the results, LML!
– Joe