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Boiled Frosting

A frosting made by boiling sugar and water, then folding into beaten egg white 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 lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 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. Stir constantly until the mixture boils.

  2. Continue boiling without stirring until the syrup threads when dropped from a spoon.

Finish the frosting

  1. Gradually pour the syrup onto the beaten egg white while beating constantly.

  2. Continue beating until the frosting reaches the right consistency to spread.

  3. Add your desired flavoring and spread over the 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 + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Beaten into a foam that traps air, giving the frosting its light, fluffy structure.
Sugar
Boiled into syrup that sweetens the frosting and helps it set as it cools.

The step that matters

Pouring the syrup onto the egg white. The syrup must be added slowly in a thin stream while beating constantly. Pouring too fast can deflate the foam, and the hot syrup gently cooks the egg white, so it stays stable and glossy rather than runny.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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