Why it works: Sugar and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Soft Frosting Without Eggs
Ingredients
Directions
Boil sugar and sweet milk for 5 to 8 minutes until it forms a 'hair' when tested on your finger.
Remove from heat and let it cool partially.
Add your chosen flavoring.
Beat the mixture very hard until it turns white.
If the frosting is too thick to spread, add a little milk.
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 + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 into the milk and, once boiled and cooled, sets into a soft, spreadable frosting.
- Sweet milk
- Dissolves the sugar and supplies the liquid that gives the frosting its creamy body.
The step that matters
Beating until white. Beating cools the boiled sugar syrup while air is worked in, so it thickens and turns opaque. Beating too early, while the mixture is still hot, can leave it 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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