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Dessert

Boiled Icings

A simple boiled icing made from sugar, water, egg, and vanilla or lemon extract.

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 ↓

Boiled Icings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the egg

  1. Beat the egg in a bowl until well mixed.

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar and water and bring to a boil.

  2. Boil until the water has evaporated.

Finish the icing

  1. Slowly pour the syrup into the beaten egg while mixing continuously.

  2. Add vanilla or lemon extract to taste.

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. Egg + sugartop 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

Egg
Adds body, richness and a creamy structure to the icing as it thickens.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and, once boiled into syrup, the firm body of the icing.
Vanilla or lemon extract
Adds aroma and flavor to the icing.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup into the egg. The hot syrup cooks egg proteins on contact, so pouring it slowly while beating constantly spreads the heat evenly and keeps the egg from scrambling into lumps.

“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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