Does Sugar Cook Eggs?
There's a old wives tale of sugar cooking eggs. I was wondering if there's any substance to that or if it's merely a concentration of the egg as the sugars absorb water.
I was watching The Try Guys and on this pie episode the guest chef explains the various pitfalls of making a pecan pie. She goes on to say how letting eggs and sugar sit together too long will cause the eggs to cook the yolk and possibly ruin the dish. I've never heard of eggs being "cooked" from sugar so I did a brief overview.
Overall, I'm curious if this has any real validity or if it's just a misconception.
The episode is linked along with an article about it. Try Guy Pie Ep @ 7:39 Article
Best Answer
It's not really chemistry¹, but simple physics: you can have the same result with salt. (and an experiment you can easily replicate at home: salt is much cheaper than sugar).
What happens is that the salt and the sugar and a whole lot of other things indeed absorb the water in the egg, which makes the proteins in the egg unfold, hook into one another and make these dehydrated eggs look just like cooked eggs where the heat does the same thing: unfold proteins.
Even if you add water again, these polymerized proteins will not re-absorb the water as they cannot unfold just like with a cooked egg: you can easily boil an egg, but it's hard to melt it again afterwards... ;-)
So it's a common misconception as the cooked and the dehydrated versions both look very similar, even under a microscope.
Note¹: To all the chemists and physicists out there: yes, it's an endless debate whether boiling an egg is chemistry or physics... ¯\_(?)_/¯
Pictures about "Does Sugar Cook Eggs?"
What happens when you mix eggs with sugar?
Egg yolks and sugar are beaten until the mixture is pale yellow, thiick and forms a ribbon. When the beaters are lifted, a bit of the mixture falls from it and forms a ribbon which slowly dissolves on the surface.Can sugar dissolve eggs?
Sugar will dissolve in the water (liquid) from the egg white.Can sugar burn eggs?
SARAH SAYS: When combining egg yolks and sugar, make sure that you mix together immediately, otherwise the yolks will quickly dry out from the undissolved sugar, called "burning". This will leave you with hard bits in the finished recipe i.e., cr\xe8me anglaise, pastry cream, lemon curd, etc.Why do you mix sugar with eggs?
Eggs and flour can be easily overmixed, so taking the time to cream butter and sugar before adding other ingredients ensures that your batter or dough won't split or lose its structure.Just flour, sugar and 3 eggs! VERY TASTY! # 41
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Answer 2
The old wives are spectacularly wrong in this case - sugar not only doesn't cook eggs, it makes it harder to cook them.
For example, see this passage from Shirley Corriher's "Cookwise" (emphasis mine):
One day Roland Mesnier, the White House pastry chef, asked me to prepare his lemon curd recipe b heating it on high, bringing it to a boil, and straining it. Knowing that the recipe had no starch and fearing it would turn to scrambled eggs easily, I questioned, "High?" Chef Mesnier stood there with his arms folded across his chest and repeated, "On high".
I obeyed. The split second I saw bubbles, I strained the lemon curd into a cold bowl. Sure enough, I had a tablespoon of scrambled eggs in the strainer, but in the bowl I had a thick lemon curd made in minutes. Chef Mesnier knew that his recipe had enough sugar to prevent the recipe from scrambling instantly and could be cooked over high heat.
When you add sugar to eggs and don't heat, what you get is a sweetened egg mass, and that has nothing to do with a heated/cooked egg mass.
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