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 ↓
Boiled Icing
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Boil 1 cup of granulated sugar with 4 tablespoons of water until it forms a thread when dropped from a spoon.
Make and finish the icing
Beat the egg white in a bowl.
Slowly pour the syrup into the egg white while continuously beating.
Flavor the icing as desired and spread it on the cake while warm.
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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Sugar + eggtop 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
- Granulated sugar
- Dissolves into the syrup that sets into a glossy, sweet icing.
- Egg white
- Whipped with the hot syrup to build a light, airy, stable foam structure.
- Water
- Dissolves the sugar so it can be boiled into a syrup.
The step that matters
Pouring the syrup into the egg white. The syrup must be added slowly while beating constantly. Pouring too fast can deflate the foam or cook the egg white unevenly, leaving the icing thin or grainy rather than light and smooth.
“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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