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Dessert

Boiled Icing

A simple icing made by boiling powdered sugar and water, then folding into 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 Icing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the sugar and water until it reaches a stringy consistency.

  2. Beat the egg whites until they stand in peaks.

  3. Pour the boiling sugar mixture over the beaten egg whites and beat thoroughly.

  4. Flavor to taste.

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

Powdered sugar
Dissolves in boiling water to form a syrup that sets the icing's sweetness and body.
Egg whites
Whipped into peaks to trap air, giving the icing its light, fluffy structure.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling syrup over the egg whites. The syrup must be hot enough to cook the egg whites slightly and stabilise the foam. Pouring it in a thin stream while beating keeps the whites from scrambling and lets the icing thicken smoothly.

“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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