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Dessert

Boiled Icing

A sugar icing made by boiling sugar and water, then folding into beaten egg white with cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Boiled Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the sugar and water together without stirring until it can form a thread.

Make the icing

  1. Meanwhile, beat the egg white until stiff.

  2. Add the cream of tartar to the egg white.

  3. Pour the boiling syrup over the egg mixture.

  4. Turn slowly and beat constantly until thickened and smooth.

Finish

  1. Pour over the cake.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Granulated sugar
Forms the syrup that sets into a sweet, glossy icing when cooled.
Egg white
Whipped to a foam that gives the icing its light, airy structure.
Cream of tartar
Stabilises the beaten egg white so it holds its foam longer.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling syrup over the egg mixture. The syrup must be hot enough to cook the egg white partly while you beat, and it should be poured in a slow stream while beating so the foam does not collapse or the egg does not scramble.

“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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