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Dessert

White Icing

White icing is a sweet glaze made from sugar syrup and beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

White Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine 2 cups granulated sugar and 7 tablespoons cold water in a saucepan.

  2. Boil the mixture until it reaches a hair‑like consistency.

Make the icing

  1. Beat 2 egg whites until very stiff.

  2. Gradually add the syrup to the egg whites while beating hard and constantly until it can be spread nicely.

  3. Add 1 teaspoon vanilla if desired.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  3. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Granulated sugar
Dissolves into the water to form a syrup that sets the icing's sweetness and body.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the icing its light, airy structure.

The step that matters

Gradually add the syrup to the egg whites while beating. Adding the hot syrup slowly while beating keeps the egg white foam from collapsing and lets the syrup cook the whites into a stable, spreadable icing.

“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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