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Dessert

Boiled White Glaze

A clear, sweet glaze made from boiled sugar, water, and beaten egg whites, flavored with extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Boiled White Glaze

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil sugar and water until a drop in cold water becomes brittle.

Make the glaze

  1. Beat egg whites slightly, then pour hot syrup over them while beating continuously.

  2. Return mixture to heat for one minute, stirring constantly to prevent burning.

  3. Place saucepan in ice water and beat until it thickens and whitens.

Finish

  1. Add flavoring just before pouring over 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 + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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 the glossy, sweet body of the glaze.
Egg whites
Whipped with the hot syrup to create an airy, foamy structure that thickens the glaze.

The step that matters

Returning the mixture to heat. Heating for only one minute while stirring constantly keeps the sugar from scorching on the pan bottom. Too little stirring lets the mixture burn, which gives a bitter flavour and dark spots.

“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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