1,560 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 78 videos

This site uses only a few technical cookies necessary for its operation. By continuing to browse, you accept their use.
To find out more...

Sugar syrups

In cooking, and especially in pastry, we often use sugar syrups, a simple mixture of water and sugar in varying proportions.
Here is a presentation of their differences.

13 K 4.8/5 (19 reviews)

Keywords for this post:Syrup Sugar Degrees Cooking Baking

Last modified on: January 17^th 2023

For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend

Sugar syrups

A syrup is simply water and sugar, brought to a boil to mix them well, and then left to cool before use.
The difference is in the ratio of water to sugar, or in other words, how much sugar do you put in how much water?

Of course, starting with 1 liter of water, all weights of sugar are possible, but there are still 2 main proportions very used.

The heavy syrup

It is a ratio of half and half, 1 liter of water + 1 kilo of sugar. The syrup obtained, quite thick, is called "syrup at 30" by pastry chefs.
It is used as a base for fruit sorbets, to soak babas or cookies, or to shine the top of a pastry or pastry.

baba au rhum

The light syrup

It is a different ratio, 1 liter of water + 500 gr of sugar. The syrup obtained, quite light, is called "syrup for 60" or "poaching syrup" by pastry chefs.
It is used to poach fruits.

pocher des fruits

How to make it?

It's very simple, you mix sugar and water in the desired proportions in a saucepan, you bring it to boil for 1 minute, you let it cool and it's ready.
Syrups can be kept in a closed container in the fridge, away from the air. They can also be easily frozen.

The degree of a syrup

As indicated above, the names sometimes refer to a degree, for example 30° for "syrup at 30", it is not a temperature, but an old measure of concentration, the Baumé degree (of the French chemist Antoine Baumé), which is obsolete but whose use, very approximate, still persists.

In summary: A syrup is a mixture of water and sugar in variable proportions, the 2 most used proportions are 1 liter of water for 1 kg of sugar (heavy syrup) or 1 liter of water for 500 gr of sugar (light syrup).

Lasts posts

Pre-calibrated pastry dough

When making pie dough (shortbread, shortcrust, sweet...), it's always a good idea to make a lot at once, and then divide it into pieces, which you can freeze. I've already pointed out the mistake not to make, which is to form a ball before freezing. It's difficult to roll out afterwards because...
March 9^th 20264805

Butter vs. grease

We often read in a recipe where a pastry is put into a mould that, just before pouring, the mould should be buttered or greased. But what's the difference between these 2 terms?
December 1^st 20252,8185

Getting out of the fridge early

Very often when you're cooking, you need to take food or preparations out of the fridge, to use them in the recipe in progress. There's nothing tricky about this: you just take them out of the fridge and use them, usually immediately, in the recipe. But is this really a good method?
November 24^th 20251,7965

Who's making the croissants?

When you look at a bakery from the outside, you naturally think that in the bakery, the bakers make the bread, and in the laboratory, the pastry chefs make the cakes. It's very often like that, with each of these professions having quite different ways of working, but sometimes there's also one...
November 23^th 20251,633

Oven height

When we put a dish or cake in the oven, we naturally tend to put it on the middle shelf, and that's what we usually do. But in some cases, this position and height can be a little tricky, so let's find out why.
October 8^th 20255,6605

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

The 3 kinds of meringue

Meringue – what could be simpler? Just beaten egg whites with sugar added. This makes a fairly stiff mixture which can then be cooked in a cool oven to create those lovely, light confections. But in the world of professional patisserie, meringue comes in three different kinds. Even if the...
June 14^th 201366 K4.5

Using stretch food film effectively

Maybe you use food film in your own kitchen. You know, the very thin, clear plastic stuff that you can stretch, often used to cover food and protect it from the air. It’s become so widely used that it’s now an essential item for pros. They even have a verb for it in French: “filmer”: to...
May 12^th 201824 K 14.9

Drawing a pattern in pastry

Often in the kitchen, in pastry-making, or in baking, we need to trace a pattern on a pastry. It's just a question of aesthetics but it has its effect after baking on a galette, pithiviers, pâté en croute (terrine in a pie crust), etc.
May 23^th 201937 K4.1

The right weight of pastry for a pie

Let's try to solve a thorny problem: How much dough will I need when I make my next pie? You're planning to make a pie, you're going to use your favourite mould or circle, but how much pastry will you need to fill it completely with a well spread pastry, without being too thin, or on the contrary...
March 20^th 202067 K4.3

Cleaning endives

If you buy your endives elsewhere than in supermarkets, and in this case the best is of course from a market gardener, he or she is the one who planted and harvested them, in this case you will have endives full of earth or sand, depending on where they were grown, which is normal and reassuring, we...
March 24^th 202027 K4.6