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Dessert

Confectioners' Icing

A sweet icing made from beaten egg whites and sugar, cooked over a boiling kettle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 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 ↓

Confectioners' Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. Beat the egg whites until frothy.

  2. Add the sugar and mix well.

  3. Place the mixture in a small can over a boiling tea kettle.

  4. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.

Ice the cake

  1. Spread the icing on the cake quickly, as it hardens immediately.

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
Whipped into foam, they create the airy, light structure of the icing.
White sugar
Dissolves into the whites and, with gentle heat, sets into a smooth, glossy coating.

The step that matters

Cooking over the kettle while stirring constantly. Gentle heat from the steam cooks the egg whites and dissolved sugar evenly. Stopping the stirring can let the whites cook into lumps or unevenly, so the icing becomes grainy instead of smooth.

“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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