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Dessert

Cooked Icing

A sugar-based icing made by boiling sugar with water, then folding in beaten egg whites, lemon juice, and cream of tartar.

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 ↓

Cooked Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and boiling water in a saucepan.

  2. Place the saucepan in boiling water and boil until the mixture is stringy.

Make the icing

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Pour the hot sugar mixture over the beaten egg whites and beat until almost cool.

  3. Add lemon juice and cream of tartar dissolved in 1 teaspoon of cold water.

  4. Use 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.

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 + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Sugar
Dissolves and cooks into a syrup that sweetens and sets the icing as it cools.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that gives the icing its light, airy structure.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the whites, helping the foam stay stable and resist collapsing.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that helps stabilize the egg white foam and brightens the sweetness.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup over the whites. The hot syrup must be poured in slowly while beating so it cooks and stabilizes the egg white foam without deflating it. Beating until nearly cool sets the structure before the icing firms.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Strawberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, cream. 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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