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Dessert

Boiled Frosting

A frosting made by boiling sugar with water, then mixing with beaten egg white and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Boiled Frosting

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 Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and cold water in a saucepan.

  2. Boil without stirring until it becomes slightly brittle.

Whip and finish

  1. Pour the hot syrup into the beaten egg white.

  2. Add your chosen flavoring and beat until cold.

  3. Add tartaric acid for a firmer icing if desired.

  4. Spread the frosting on the 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

White sugar
Forms the syrup that sets into a glossy, sweet frosting when boiled and cooled.
Egg white
Beaten to foam, it traps air and gives the frosting its light, fluffy structure.
Tartaric acid
Acidity helps stabilise the egg white foam and gives a firmer icing.

The step that matters

Boil without stirring until slightly brittle. Stirring can trigger sugar crystallisation, making the frosting grainy. Boiling the syrup to the right concentration controls how firm the frosting sets once beaten.

“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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