Cooking For Engineers

[Guest]

In some cake recipes, eggs and sugar are mixed together and beaten, in
others the sugar is beaten gradually into the eggs. When would one use one method over the other. Why is it necessary to gradually add sugar to eggs and how does it effect the end result?

[Michael Chu]

From a technical perspective, to achieve a smooth mixture without over beating, you should always beat the sugar into the eggs gradually. This lets the sugar blend into the eggs with minimal clumping as you add more and more.

Some recipes just call for the eggs and sugar together for the convenience of the cook. Recipe writing is a balance between the best practice and easiest methods. For quick recipes, like quick cheesecakes, you'll see that ingredients are generally dumped together quickly instead of attempting to achieve maximum blend/smoothness/aeration/etc. because the recipe is designed to require less attention to detail by the chef. Long and involved recipes for the ultimate cheesecake, on the otherhand will include the more time consuming steps of adding sugar gradually, or some other ingredient in small pieces until all of it has been used. These steps take more time, achieve the very best results, but also require the cook to spend more time diligently and patiently following the directions.