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Dessert

Boiled Icing

A simple icing made by boiling sugar and water, then mixing into beaten egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

Boiled Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the egg in a bowl until frothy.

  2. Add a pinch of cream of tartar or lemon juice.

Make the icing

  1. In a saucepan, boil the sugar and water gently for 5 minutes.

  2. Gradually add the syrup to the egg, beating thoroughly until it begins to stiffen.

  3. Pour over the cake and smooth with a knife dipped in boiling water if necessary.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Egg
Whipped to foam, its proteins trap air and give the icing a light, airy body.
Granulated sugar
Boiled into syrup, it sets into the icing and provides sweetness.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the egg foam, helping it stay stable and resist collapsing.

The step that matters

Gradually add the syrup to the egg. Pouring the hot syrup in slowly while beating lets the egg foam absorb it without cooking or deflating. Adding it too fast can scramble the egg or collapse the foam, so the icing will not stiffen properly.

“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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