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Dessert

Boiled Frosting

A frosting made by boiling sugar and water, then folding in beaten egg white.

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 syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar and water.

  2. Stir until dissolved.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil and let it boil for 4 minutes.

Whip and spread

  1. Beat the egg white to stiff peaks.

  2. Pour the hot sugar mixture over the beaten egg white and beat until thick, smooth, and nearly cold.

  3. Spread the frosting while it is still warm.

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
Dissolved into boiled syrup that sets the frosting's sweetness and body.
Egg white
Whipped into a foam that gives the frosting its light, airy structure.
Water
Dissolves the sugar so it can be boiled into a syrup.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup into the egg white. The syrup must be hot and poured in a thin stream while beating, so it cooks the egg white and forms a stable, glossy foam. Pouring too fast or letting the syrup cool can deflate the foam or leave the frosting 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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