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Dessert

E Xcellent Frosting

A sugar-based frosting made by boiling sugar and water, adding to beaten egg whites, and mixing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

E Xcellent Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Boil sugar and water until it drops from a spoon.

Combine with the egg whites

  1. Add 1 tablespoon of the hot sugar to the beaten egg whites.

  2. Return the remaining sugar to the stove and boil until it threads.

  3. Pour the hot sugar mixture into the egg whites while mixing.

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 + 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

Sugar
Cooks into a syrup that sweetens the frosting and helps it set firm.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that traps air, giving the frosting its light, fluffy structure.

The step that matters

Pour the hot sugar mixture into the egg whites while mixing. The hot syrup gently cooks the egg white proteins as it is beaten in, which stabilises the foam. If it is added without constant mixing, it can cook in streaks or lumps and the frosting may lose its smooth, airy texture.

“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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