Skip to main content
Dessert

Boiled Frosting III

A frosting made by boiling sugar with water, then folding in beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Egg and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Frosting III

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Wet the sugar with water.

  2. Boil the sugar until it forms "hairs" when lifted with a spoon.

Make the frosting

  1. Beat the egg whites until very light.

  2. Stir the boiling sugar into the beaten egg whites.

  3. Beat the mixture until cold.

  4. If too stiff, add a little milk; if too thin, add a little powdered sugar.

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. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Forms a boiled syrup that sets into a sweet, glossy frosting structure.
Egg whites
Whipped to foam, they give the frosting its light, airy texture.

The step that matters

Boil the sugar until it forms "hairs". The sugar must reach the right concentration before it is poured into the egg whites. Too little boiling leaves the frosting runny, while too much makes it hard and grainy once cooled.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes