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Dessert

Boiled Icing

A boiled sugar syrup mixed with beaten egg whites, optionally flavored with almonds or hickory nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and meat work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 486 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Boiled Icing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the sugar and hot water briskly for 5 minutes, or until it threads when dropped from a spoon.

  2. While beating the egg whites, slowly pour the boiling syrup over them in a small stream.

  3. Continue beating hard until well combined.

  4. If desired, add the blanched almond paste or chopped hickory nuts for extra flavor.

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. Almond + meattop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together486 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

  4. Egg + meattop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Egg + almondtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the icing its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Boiled with water into a syrup that sets and sweetens the icing.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling syrup into the egg whites. Pour the syrup slowly in a thin stream while beating constantly. Pouring too fast or without beating can cook the egg whites unevenly in lumps instead of blending them into a smooth, stable foam.

Swap the almond

The recipe marks almond as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, meat):

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Walnutfits about as well
  3. Almondthe original
  4. Nutsfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, meat. 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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