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Dessert

Boiled Frosting

A sugar-based frosting made by boiling sugar in 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 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 Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the hot water, ensuring no granules remain on the sides of the pan.

  2. Boil without stirring until the syrup threads from the tines of a fork.

Make the frosting

  1. Pour the syrup very slowly into the stiffly beaten egg whites, beating constantly until thick enough to spread.

  2. If the frosting is slow to thicken, place the bowl in a pan of hot water while beating.

  3. Add the flavoring and apply to the cake immediately.

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 + 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
Dissolves in hot water to form a syrup that sets the frosting and sweetens it.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that traps air and gives the frosting its light, spreadable structure.

The step that matters

Pouring the syrup into the egg whites. Hot syrup poured slowly while beating cooks the egg white proteins and builds a thick, stable foam. Pouring too fast or without constant beating can leave the frosting runny or lumpy.

“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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