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Dessert

Clear Frosting

A clear frosting made by boiling sugar and milk, then beating until smooth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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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 ↓

Clear Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine sugar and enough milk to moisten in a saucepan.

  2. Boil the mixture until it is foaming.

  3. Remove from heat and beat until smooth and clear.

  4. While still warm, spread between layers and on top of the cake before it gets too stiff.

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 + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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
Forms the sweet, glossy syrup that sets into the frosting once cooled.
Milk
Moistens the sugar and dissolves it so the mixture can be boiled into a syrup.

The step that matters

Beating after removing from heat. Beating the hot syrup while it cools lets fine sugar crystals form, which makes the frosting smooth and clear. Frosting that cools without beating can turn grainy or stiff, so it should be spread while still warm.

“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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