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Dessert

Boiled Icing

A simple icing made by boiling sugar and water, then folding into beaten egg white.

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 ↓

Boiled Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the sugar and water without stirring until the syrup threads.

Make the icing

  1. Beat the egg white until stiff, then add the cream of tartar.

  2. Pour the boiling syrup over the egg white in a fine stream while beating continuously.

  3. When thick enough to spread, apply it to 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.

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

Granulated sugar
Forms the syrup that sets into a sweet, glossy icing body.
Egg white
Whipped to a foam that gives the icing its light, airy structure.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the whipped egg white so it holds its volume.

The step that matters

Pouring the syrup into the egg white. Hot syrup must be poured in a fine stream while beating constantly. Pouring too fast or stopping lets the syrup cook the egg white unevenly and deflates the foam, so the icing turns grainy or runny instead of thick and 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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