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Boiled Icing

A sweet glaze made by whipping egg white with sugar syrup and flavoring.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the meringue

  1. Beat the egg white until frothy.

  2. Add the cream of tartar and beat until stiff and dry.

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup with the sugar and water.

  2. When the syrup reaches the honey stage, add 5 tablespoons slowly to the egg white, beating well.

Finish the icing

  1. Cook the remaining syrup until it threads, then pour it over the egg white while beating thoroughly.

  2. Add the flavoring and beat until cool enough 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 + 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. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream 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

Egg white
Whipped into a foam that gives the icing its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Dissolved into syrup and cooked to set, giving the icing its sweetness and firmness.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the whipped egg white so the foam holds its shape.

The step that matters

Cooking the syrup to the honey and threading stages. The syrup's temperature determines how firm the icing becomes. Adding it at the honey stage and cooking the rest to the threading stage controls the sugar concentration, so the icing sets smooth and spreadable rather than grainy or runny.

“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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