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Dessert

Boiled Frosting

A frosting made by boiling powdered sugar and water, then folding in beaten egg whites and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Boiled Frosting

Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Boiled Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine powdered sugar and clear water in a saucepan.

  2. Let the mixture sit until dissolved.

  3. Boil the mixture until it is clear and forms threads when dripped from a spoon.

Make the frosting

  1. Beat the egg whites in a separate bowl until stiff.

  2. Pour the lukewarm syrup into the bowl with the egg whites.

  3. Mix well for 30 minutes.

  4. Flavor the frosting with vanilla, rose water, or lemon juice as desired.

Ice the cake

  1. Lightly dust the cake with flour before icing.

  2. Apply the first coat of frosting to the cake immediately after mixing.

  3. Continue to beat the remaining frosting.

  4. Place the cake in a warm area to speed up the process.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that gives the frosting its light, airy structure.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves into the syrup, providing sweetness and the body that sets the frosting.
Clear water
Dissolves the sugar so it can be boiled into a syrup of controlled concentration.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup to the thread stage. Boiling concentrates the sugar; if the syrup is undercooked, the frosting stays runny and will not set, while overcooking makes it hard and grainy 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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