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Dessert

Maple Sugar Frosting

A frosting made from maple sugar, boiling water, and egg whites, boiled to syrup and beaten into a spreadable consistency.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg 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 ↓

Maple Sugar Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Break the maple sugar into small pieces and place in a saucepan with boiling water.

  2. Stir occasionally until the sugar is dissolved.

  3. Boil without stirring until the syrup can thread when dropped from the tip of a spoon.

Make the frosting

  1. Gradually pour the syrup onto the beaten egg whites while beating constantly.

  2. Continue beating until the mixture reaches the right consistency to spread.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

  1. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Maple sugar
Provides the sweetness and maple flavor that defines the frosting.
Egg whites
Whipped to foam, they give the frosting its light, airy structure.
Boiling water
Dissolves the sugar so it can be cooked into a syrup.

The step that matters

Gradually pour the syrup onto the beaten egg whites while beating constantly. Hot syrup poured in too fast or without constant beating can cook and clump the egg whites, or deflate the foam. Steady beating lets the hot syrup cook the whites gently into a smooth, stable meringue-like frosting.

“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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