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Dessert

Boiled Frosting for Filling

A boiled sugar syrup mixed with beaten egg whites to create a frosting for cakes.

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 Frosting for Filling

enough for a large cake of 6 layers or more

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil sugar and water in a saucepan until it reaches a thick syrup.

Combine and flavor

  1. Pour the boiling syrup over the stiffly beaten egg whites while stirring constantly.

  2. Add lemon or vanilla extract for flavor.

Serve

  1. Use immediately; this frosting is enough for a large cake of 6 layers or more.

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

Sugar
Dissolves into the boiling syrup, which sets into a sweet, glossy structure when cooled.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that the hot syrup cooks and stabilizes into a light, fluffy frosting.
Water
Dissolves the sugar so it can be boiled into a thick syrup.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling syrup over the egg whites. The syrup must be hot and poured in a slow, steady stream while stirring constantly. The heat cooks the egg white proteins so the foam sets, and pouring too fast or too cool can leave it runny or lumpy.

Swap the lemon

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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