Skip to main content
Dessert

Caramel Frosting

A sweet frosting made by combining boiled sugar, caramel, and beaten egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Caramel 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 ↓

Caramel Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil 1 cup of sugar and ¼ cup of water until it reaches a thread stage.

  2. In another pan, cook ¼ cup of sugar until it reaches the caramel stage.

  3. Add 1-2 tablespoons of boiling water to the caramel and continue cooking until dissolved.

  4. Combine the caramel with the first mixture and cook until it threads again.

Finish the frosting

  1. Pour the hot mixture onto the beaten egg white and beat until cold.

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
Forms the syrup that sets into a smooth, sweet frosting texture.
Egg white
Whipped to foam, it gives the frosting its light, airy body.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup onto the egg white. Pour the hot syrup in a thin, steady stream while beating. Pouring too fast can cook the egg white unevenly or deflate the foam, so the frosting loses its lightness.

“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.

More caramel frosting recipes

Chocolate 3 See all 43 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes