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Dessert

Iceing for a Rich Cake

A glaze made by mixing stiff egg whites with boiled syrup, applied to cakes and baked until dry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and syrup are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 32% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,995 recipes. The science ↓

Iceing for a Rich Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. Whisk the egg whites until very stiff.

  2. In a small saucepan, boil the syrup until it reaches the blow stage when tested with a skimmer.

  3. Stir the syrup in the pan until it becomes thick and white.

  4. Mix the thickened syrup with the whisked egg whites until well combined.

Apply and dry

  1. Spread the icing over your cakes and place them in the oven.

  2. Allow the icing to dry, then apply another coat.

  3. Smooth the icing as much as possible and let it dry in the oven.

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 + syruptop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,995 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whisked into a stiff foam that gives the icing its light, airy structure.
Syrup
Boiled and thickened to add sweetness and body that holds the icing together.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup to the blow stage. The syrup's sugar concentration sets how the icing dries. Stopping too early leaves it runny and soft, while boiling too far makes it brittle and grainy. Testing with a skimmer helps you judge the stage before you combine it with the egg whites.

“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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