Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Boiled Icing
Ingredients
Directions
Boil the granulated sugar until it threads from a spoon.
Beat the egg whites until nearly stiff.
Add the pulverized sugar to the egg whites and continue beating.
Pour the boiled sugar onto the mixture and beat until stiff.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Egg whites
- Whipped into foam, they provide the airy structure that holds the icing together.
- Granulated sugar
- Boiled to a syrup, it sets into a glossy, sweet body when beaten into the whites.
- Pulverized sugar
- Dissolves readily into the whites, adding sweetness and helping stabilize the foam.
The step that matters
Pour the boiled sugar onto the mixture and beat until stiff. The syrup must be hot but not caramelized, and poured in a thin stream while beating. Hot syrup cooks the egg white proteins slightly and stabilizes the foam; pouring too fast can deflate it or leave it grainy.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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