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Dessert

Boiled Frosting

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Boiled Frosting

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Boiled Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil sugar, cream of tartar, and water until it spins a thread when dropped from a spoon.

Whip the frosting

  1. Pour the syrup in a fine stream onto the beaten egg white while beating continuously.

  2. Continue beating until the mixture is stiff enough to stand alone, then add flavoring.

Spread

  1. Spread on the cake with a knife dipped in warm water.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 syrup that sets the frosting and provides sweetness.
Egg white
Whipped into a foam that gives the frosting its light, airy structure.
Cream of tartar
Its acidity helps stabilize the egg white foam so it holds its shape.

The step that matters

Pouring the syrup in a fine stream while beating. The syrup is very hot, and pouring it slowly while beating lets it cook and incorporate into the egg white foam evenly. Pouring too fast can deflate the foam or leave cooked streaks.

“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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