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Dessert

Boiled Icing for Cake

A boiled icing made from sugar, water, egg white, and vanilla, used for cake decoration.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Boiled Icing for Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and water in a saucepan.

  2. Boil until the mixture thickens enough to form a string when dripped from a spoon.

Finish the icing

  1. Beat the egg white until stiff peaks form.

  2. Pour the hot sugar mixture into the beaten egg white and beat until the icing is nearly cold.

  3. Flavor with vanilla extract.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  3. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Dissolves into the syrup and sets into a sweet, smooth icing structure as it cools.
Egg white
Whipped into a foam that gives the icing volume, lightness and a soft texture.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup into the egg white. The syrup must be hot enough to cook the egg white slightly and set the foam, while beating keeps the mixture from deflating. Adding it slowly while beating helps the icing stay smooth and glossy.

“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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