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Dessert

Boiled Frosting I

A frosting made by boiling sugar and water, then folding into beaten egg and flavoring.

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 ↓

Boiled Frosting I

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the egg to a stiff froth.

  2. Boil the sugar and water until it forms threads when lifted with a spoon or a soft ball in cold water.

  3. Pour the syrup slowly over the beaten egg while continuously beating.

  4. Add flavoring and continue to beat until cold.

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

Granulated sugar
Forms the syrup that sets into a sweet, smooth frosting as it cools.
Egg
Beaten to a stiff froth, it traps air and gives the frosting a light, airy body.
Water
Dissolves the sugar so it can be boiled into a syrup of the right concentration.

The step that matters

Pour the syrup slowly over the beaten egg while continuously beating.. Hot syrup poured too fast can cook the egg unevenly and deflate the foam. Steady, slow pouring with constant beating blends the syrup in smoothly and keeps the frosting light.

“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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