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Dessert

Boiled Icing

A sweet icing made by boiling sugar and water, whisking egg white, and adding chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,404 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Boiled Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. Boil the sugar and cold water until it drops from the spoon in threads.

  2. Beat the egg white in a bowl.

  3. Slowly pour the syrup into the egg white while beating continuously.

  4. Flavor the icing.

Ice the cake

  1. Spread the icing on the cake while warm.

  2. Melt the Baker's chocolate in a bowl over a kettle.

  3. Spread a layer of white icing on the cake.

  4. Add the melted chocolate.

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 + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Egg + chocolatetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

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

What each ingredient does

Granulated sugar
Dissolves into a syrup that sets into the icing and provides sweetness.
Egg white
Whips into a foam that gives the icing its light, airy structure.
Baker's unsweetened chocolate
Adds deep chocolate flavor and color to the white icing.

The step that matters

Pouring the syrup into the egg white while beating. The hot syrup cooks and expands the egg white into a stable foam. Pouring slowly while beating continuously keeps the egg white from scrambling and lets the icing thicken evenly.

“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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