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Dessert

Caramel Icing

A sweet glaze made from browned sugar, water, egg whites, flavoring, and sherry.

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

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 ↓

Caramel Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Cook 1 cup of brown sugar over high heat until well browned.

  2. Pour in 1 cup of water and cook until sugar threads form.

Make the icing

  1. Beat the 2 egg whites until well beaten.

  2. Slowly pour the browned sugar over the egg whites while beating rapidly until frothy and thick.

  3. Add 1 teaspoon of flavoring and 1 tablespoon of sherry, then mix until very light.

Finish

  1. Spread the icing smoothly on the top and sides of 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + sherrytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Egg + sherrytop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sugar
Browns and caramelizes to give the icing its characteristic flavor and color.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the icing its light, airy structure.

The step that matters

Pouring the browned sugar over the egg whites while beating. The hot syrup must be poured slowly while beating rapidly so it incorporates into the whites rather than cooking them in lumps or deflating the foam, which is what makes the icing thick and light.

“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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