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Boiled Icing with Raisins

A boiled sugar icing mixed with raisins and egg white, used as a spread between cake layers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,481 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Boiled Icing with Raisins

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. Boil the sugar and water until it threads from the spoon.

  2. Pour the syrup onto the beaten egg white.

  3. Beat with an egg beater until thick enough to spread.

Add raisins and fill the cake

  1. Reserve some icing for the top layer.

  2. Mix the raisins into the remaining icing.

  3. Spread the icing with raisins between the cake layers.

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 + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 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. Raisin + eggtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,556 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Dissolved in water and boiled, it forms a syrup that sets the icing firm and adds sweetness.
Egg white
Beaten, it traps air and, combined with the hot syrup, gives the icing a light, thick, spreadable structure.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness to the icing filling.

The step that matters

Boil the sugar and water until it threads from the spoon. The sugar concentration reached by boiling determines how firmly the icing sets. Stopping early leaves it runny, while cooking too long makes it stiff and brittle.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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