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 Icing
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Boil the hot water and sugar until the syrup forms a rope when dropped in cold water.
Do not stir after the sugar has melted.
Whip the icing
Pour the syrup slowly over the well-beaten egg whites while beating continuously.
Continue to beat until the mixture is nearly cold.
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.
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Sugar
- Dissolves into the syrup that sets and sweetens the icing as it cools.
- Egg whites
- Whipped to a foam that gives the icing its light, airy structure.
- Hot water
- Dissolves the sugar and helps form the syrup that is poured into the egg whites.
The step that matters
Pouring the syrup while beating. Pouring the hot syrup slowly into the whites while beating continuously cooks and stabilises the foam gently. Pouring too fast or stopping to beat can collapse the foam or leave it grainy.
“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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