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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) · 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 III

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Wet the sugar with water.

  2. Boil until it forms threads when lifted with a spoon.

Whip and finish

  1. Beat the egg whites until very light.

  2. Stir in the boiling sugar.

  3. Beat until cold.

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

Sugar
Dissolves and boils into a syrup that sweetens and sets the frosting as it cools.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that gives the frosting its light, airy structure.

The step that matters

Stir in the boiling sugar. The syrup must be hot enough to cook the egg whites slightly and stabilise the foam. Pouring it in gradually while beating keeps the mixture smooth and prevents the whites from deflating or clumping.

“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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