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Boiled Frosting

A frosting made by boiling sugar with water and folding into beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Boiled Frosting

Why it works: Sugar and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,679 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Boiled Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the sugar and hot water.

  3. Boil the sugar mixture briskly for 5 minutes until it 'ropes' from the spoon.

Combine and finish

  1. Pour the hot sugar mixture over the beaten egg whites and stir until cool.

  2. If desired, add the blanched and pounded almonds for extra flavor.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + almondtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that gives the frosting its light, airy structure.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the frosting and, once boiled, sets into a firm, glossy coating.

The step that matters

Boil the sugar mixture to the rope stage. Boiling drives off water and concentrates the sugar. Syrup that is cooked to the point where it ropes from the spoon will set as it cools, stiffening the whipped whites. Syrup that is undercooked stays runny and the frosting will not hold its shape.

Swap the almond

The recipe marks almond as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar):

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Milletfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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