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Boiled Frosting

A frosting made by pouring boiled sugar syrup over stiffly beaten egg white and beating until blended.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 frosting

  1. Boil sugar and water in a saucepan until clear, without stirring.

  2. Remove from heat and slowly pour over the stiffly beaten egg white, stirring and beating until well blended.

Finish the cake

  1. Spread the frosting over the cake.

  2. Add any preferred coloring or flavoring if desired.

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 into a syrup that gives the frosting sweetness and a smooth, glossy body.
Egg white
Its beaten proteins trap air, giving the frosting a light, fluffy, spreadable structure.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup into the egg white. The syrup is very hot and partly cooks the egg white. Pouring it slowly while beating spreads the heat evenly and lets the syrup blend in without scrambling the egg or deflating the foam.

“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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