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Dessert

Boiled Frosting

A simple frosting made by boiling sugar and milk, then cooling and spreading on a cake.

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

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 ↓

Boiled Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

Make the frosting

  1. Combine sugar and milk in a saucepan.

  2. Boil for 4 to 5 minutes.

  3. Stir the mixture until it cools.

Finish

  1. Spread the frosting on a cooled cake.

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 + 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
Provides sweetness and, as it cools, the crystals that give the frosting its body.
Milk
Liquid that dissolves the sugar and adds moisture and richness.

The step that matters

Boil for 4 to 5 minutes. Boiling evaporates water and concentrates the sugar. Too short leaves the frosting runny, and too long makes it set too firm once cooled.

“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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