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Dessert

Boiled Icing

A sweet glaze made by boiling sugar and water, then folding into beaten egg white and flavoring with rose water and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup and egg white

  1. Beat the egg white until stiff peaks form.

  2. In a saucepan, combine sugar and water; bring to a boil until clear.

Combine and flavor

  1. Pour the hot sugar mixture over the beaten egg white, stirring constantly until cool.

  2. Flavor with a mixture of rose water and vanilla to taste.

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

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

  2. Rose + vanillatop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together456 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + rosetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,584 recipes

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

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 white
Its proteins trap air when beaten, forming a light, foamy structure for the icing.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and, when boiled into syrup, gives the icing its smooth, glossy body.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup over the egg white. The hot syrup partly cooks the beaten whites into a stable foam. Pouring it in a thin stream while stirring constantly keeps the foam from collapsing or clumping.

“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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