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Dessert

Directions for Frosting

A frosting made from egg whites, powdered sugar, and optional flavorings, with a boiled sugar variant.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar 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 ↓

Directions for Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

Make the frosting

  1. Break the eggs into a flat dish.

  2. Beat the eggs with a fork until stiff.

  3. Add the sugar and flavoring.

  4. Ensure everything is thoroughly beaten before frosting the cake.

Prepare the cake

  1. If the cake is rough or brown, dust the cake with flour.

  2. Rub off loose particles from the cake.

Frost and finish

  1. Spread the frosting smoothly with a knife.

  2. If the frosting is too stiff, dip the knife in cold water.

  3. Spread the frosting easily with the wet knife.

  4. Let the frosting set in a warm place without browning.

  5. If the frosting dries too quickly, add a drop or two of hot water.

  6. Add decorations like raisins, nuts, or candies while the icing is still moist.

Make boiled frosting

  1. For boiled frosting, cover 1 cup of sugar with water.

  2. Boil the sugar and water without stirring until it ropes.

  3. Beat the egg white.

  4. Stir in the boiled sugar.

  5. Continue stirring until cool.

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 + sugartop 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

Egg whites
Beaten until stiff, they trap air and give the frosting its light, fluffy structure.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves into the beaten whites to add sweetness and body to the frosting.
Sugar
Boiled with water to form a syrup that gives the boiled frosting its sweetness and set.

The step that matters

Boil the sugar and water without stirring. Stirring a boiling sugar syrup can trigger crystallization, leaving a grainy frosting. Boiling it until it ropes gives the syrup the concentration needed to set properly once beaten.

“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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