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Boiled Icing Foe Cake

A boiled icing made by cooking sugar and water, then folding into beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 Icing Foe Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the water and powdered sugar until it thickens and hangs in strings from the spoon.

  2. Gradually pour the hot mixture over the well-beaten egg whites while beating continuously until the mixture cools.

Finish the icing

  1. For the icing, break the egg whites into a clean, cool bowl and add a small handful of sugar.

  2. Whip the sugar into the egg whites with long, even strokes, adding more sugar at intervals until fully incorporated.

  3. Continue beating until the icing is smooth, firm, and has a fine texture, about 30 minutes.

  4. If the icing is not stiff enough, add more sugar.

  5. If using lemon juice, account for the extra liquid when measuring sugar.

  6. Use a broad-bladed knife dipped in cold water to apply the icing.

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 + 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. Sugar + eggtop 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

Powdered sugar
Dissolves into the boiled water to form a syrup that sets the icing's body and sweetness.
Egg whites
Whipped to a foam that gives the icing its light structure and firm body.
Water
Dissolves the sugar and, once boiled, forms the syrup that is beaten into the egg whites.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup into the egg whites. Pouring the syrup gradually while beating continuously lets the hot sugar cook and stabilize the egg white foam. Pouring it in one go or stopping the beating can deflate the foam and leave the icing runny or grainy.

Swap the lemon

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

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