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Dessert

Boiled White Frosting

A frosting made by boiling sugar and water, then folding into beaten egg white.

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 White Frosting

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and water in a saucepan.

  2. Boil the sugar and water mixture until it reaches the thread stage.

Whip and combine

  1. Beat the egg white until stiff peaks form.

  2. Slowly pour the hot syrup into the beaten egg white while continuously beating.

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

Granulated sugar
Dissolves into the water and cooks into a syrup that sweetens and sets the frosting.
Egg white
Whipped into a foam that gives the frosting its light, airy structure.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup into the beaten egg white. The syrup must be poured slowly while beating constantly. Pouring too fast or stopping can deflate the foam, and the hot syrup gently cooks the egg white, so the frosting stays smooth and stable.

“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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