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 ↓
Maple Frosting
Ingredients
Directions
Cook the sugar and water together until it spins a thread.
Pour the syrup over the beaten egg white, stirring constantly.
Return to a double boiler and cook until slightly dry around the edges, stirring occasionally.
Remove from heat and beat until thick.
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.
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Maple sugar
- Provides the sweetness and maple flavour, and dissolves into the syrup that sets the frosting.
- Egg white
- Whipped with the hot syrup to form a light, stable foam that gives the frosting its structure.
The step that matters
Pouring the syrup over the egg white. Hot syrup must be poured slowly while stirring constantly, so it cooks the egg white into a foam without scrambling it. Pouring too fast in one spot can curdle the egg and deflate the frosting.
“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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