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
Make the syrup
Combine 1 cup sugar with enough water to cover it in a saucepan.
Boil the mixture until it reaches a syrupy consistency.
Finish the icing
Once boiling, pour the syrup over the unbeaten egg white.
Beat the mixture rapidly with a knife until it becomes frothy.
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.
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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 into a syrup that sweetens the icing and gives it body.
- Egg white
- Its proteins trap air when beaten, forming a light foam that becomes the icing's structure.
The step that matters
Pouring the hot syrup onto the egg white and beating quickly. The hot syrup partly cooks the egg white proteins, which helps the foam hold its shape. Beating quickly while the mixture is hot traps air before the proteins firm up, so the icing stays light instead of becoming dense or grainy.
“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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