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Dessert

Brown Sugar Frosting

A frosting made by boiling brown sugar with water and cream of tartar, then folding into beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Brown Sugar Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine brown sugar, hot water, and cream of tartar.

  2. Boil the mixture until it hardens when dropped in cold water.

Finish the frosting

  1. Pour the hot syrup over the beaten egg whites.

  2. Beat the mixture until light and fluffy.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  3. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Brown sugar
Provides sweetness and flavor, and forms the syrup that sets the frosting.
Egg whites
Whipped to foam, they give the frosting its light, airy structure.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the sugar syrup, helping keep it smooth and stable as it cools.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup to the hardness test. Boil until the syrup hardens when dropped in cold water. Undercooked syrup stays too loose to set the frosting, while overcooked syrup turns stiff and grainy as it cools.

“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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