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Dessert

Boiled Frosting II

A frosting made by boiling sugar and water, then folding into beaten egg whites with cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Boiled Frosting II

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar and water; boil until a small ball forms when dropped in cold water.

Whip and combine

  1. In a mixing bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Add cream of tartar to the egg whites.

  3. Pour the hot sugar mixture over the egg whites and beat until the frosting holds its shape.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Dissolves into the water to form a syrup that sets into a sweet, glossy frosting.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the frosting its light, airy structure.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites, helping the foam hold its shape.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup into the egg whites. The syrup must be hot enough to cook the whites slightly and set the foam, while pouring slowly and beating constantly keeps the foam from collapsing. Too cool a syrup leaves the frosting loose and runny.

“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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