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Dessert

Frosting for Cake

A simple frosting made from sugar, water, and beaten egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Frosting for Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the frosting

  1. Boil the water in a saucepan.

  2. Add the frosting sugar and stir until combined.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg white until well mixed.

Frost the cake

  1. Frost your cake with the mixture.

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

Frosting sugar
Dissolves into the hot water to make a smooth, sweet frosting.
Egg white
Whipped to stiff peaks, it traps air and gives the frosting a light, fluffy body.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg white off the heat. Very hot sugar syrup can cook raw egg white, causing lumps and loss of volume. Removing the pan from the heat first and mixing gently keeps the whipped egg white airy and the frosting smooth.

“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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