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Dessert

Boiled Icing

A sweet icing made by boiling sugar and water, then folding in beaten egg white and flavoring.

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

Make the icing

  1. Combine sugar and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil until it threads from the spoon.

  2. Beat the egg white to stiff peaks in a bowl.

  3. Pour the hot sugar mixture into the beaten egg white and beat briskly for a few minutes.

  4. Add your choice of flavoring.

Finish the cake

  1. While the cake is still warm, sprinkle with flour and spread the icing on with a broad knife.

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. 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

Granulated sugar
Forms a syrup that cooks into the icing and sets it sweet and glossy.
Egg white
Whipped to stiff peaks, it forms the airy foam that gives the icing its light texture.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup into the egg white. The syrup must be hot and poured in a steady stream while beating briskly. The hot syrup cooks the egg white and stabilizes the foam, so the icing stays smooth and spreadable instead of weeping or collapsing.

“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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