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Dessert

Boiled White Icing

A white icing made by boiling sugar and water, then adding beaten egg whites.

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 Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Cover the sugar with a little water in a saucepan.

  2. Boil until it forms a ball when tested in cold water.

Finish the icing

  1. Pour the hot syrup over the unbeaten egg whites.

  2. Beat until the icing is ready to spread.

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

Sugar
Forms the syrup that sets into a glossy, sweet, spreadable icing.
Egg whites
Whipped with the hot syrup to build a light, airy foam structure.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup over the egg whites. The syrup must be boiled to the firm-ball stage so it is hot and concentrated enough to cook the whites slightly and thicken them. Undercooked syrup leaves the icing runny, and the whites need steady beating while the syrup is added so they do not scramble or deflate.

“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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