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Dessert

Boiled Icing

A boiled sugar icing made with sugar, water, egg whites, and almond flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,679 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Boiled Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a small saucepan, combine the sugar and water. Stir until dissolved.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil and cook until it threads, about 10 minutes.

  3. Wet your fingers and test the syrup; it should form a thread when ready.

Make the icing

  1. Beat the egg whites until very stiff.

  2. Pour the boiling sugar in a fine stream over the egg whites while beating with an egg beater or large spoon.

  3. Continue beating until the mixture cools and begins to stiffen.

  4. Add almond flavoring to the icing before spreading.

Finish the cake

  1. Pour the icing over the cake, ensuring it is smooth and crusty on the outside and creamy inside.

  2. If the icing is too runny, it was not cooked enough; if too hard, it was overcooked. Add a few drops of hot water to adjust.

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 + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

  3. Egg + almondtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Granulated sugar
Dissolves into syrup that sets into the icing's sweet, structured body.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the icing its light, airy texture.

The step that matters

Testing the syrup's thread stage. The sugar must reach the right concentration to set properly. Undercooked syrup leaves the icing runny, while overcooked syrup makes it hard, so testing the thread before pouring matters.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg):

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Milletfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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