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Dessert

Boiled Vanilla Icing

A sweet glaze made by boiling sugar and water, then folding into beaten egg whites and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Boiled Vanilla Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and water in a saucepan.

  2. Boil until it forms a thick syrup when dropped in a saucer.

Finish the icing

  1. Pour the syrup into the beaten egg whites while mixing continuously.

  2. Beat the mixture until thick and creamy.

  3. Flavor with vanilla extract.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  3. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Egg whites
Trap air when beaten, forming a light foam that gives the icing its airy, creamy body.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the icing and, once boiled into syrup, thickens and helps the icing hold its shape.

The step that matters

Pour the syrup into the beaten egg whites while mixing continuously. The hot syrup cooks the egg white proteins as it is beaten in, which sets the foam. Pouring slowly while mixing keeps the syrup distributed so the whites do not deflate or clump.

“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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