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Dessert

Sea Foam

Sea Foam is a sweet confection made from sugar syrup, egg white, and optional flavoring and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Sea Foam

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the sugar and water until it forms a rope ball in cold water.

  2. Add flavoring when the syrup is removed from the heat.

Whip and shape

  1. Beat the egg white to stiff froth.

  2. Pour the syrup into the egg white while constantly beating the mixture.

  3. Continue beating until the mixture is firm enough to stand alone.

  4. If desired, beat in crushed nuts when the mixture begins to thicken.

  5. Drop spoonfuls onto oiled paper.

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 + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + nutstop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,228 recipes

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

  3. Egg + nutstop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,624 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
Forms the syrup that sets into the candy's sweet, crisp structure.
Egg white
Whipped into a foam that traps air and gives the candy its light texture.

The step that matters

Pour the syrup into the egg white while constantly beating. Hot syrup poured in slowly while beating is absorbed into the foam evenly. Stopping or pouring too fast can deflate the egg white or leave pockets of syrup, so the candy will not set light and uniform.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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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