Why it works: Egg and sugar 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 ↓
White Icing
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Mix sugar with enough water to dissolve it.
Bring to a boil.
Dissolve powdered gum arabic in a little hot water and add to the sugar mixture.
Cook until it threads from a spoon.
Finish the icing
Quickly beat the mixture into the beaten egg whites.
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.
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Egg whites
- Whipped into foam to give the icing its light, airy structure.
- Sugar
- Dissolved into syrup that sweetens the icing and sets firm as it cools.
- Gum arabic
- Stabilizes the syrup so the icing stays smooth and resists crystallizing.
The step that matters
Cook until it threads from a spoon. Cooking the sugar syrup to the right concentration determines how firm the icing sets. Undercooked syrup leaves the icing soft and runny, while overcooked syrup makes it brittle or grainy.
“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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