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Dessert

Boiled Icing

A simple icing made by boiling sugar and water, then adding egg whites and spreading while hot.

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 ↓

Boiled Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. Combine sugar and water in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat until the sugar melts.

  3. Remove from heat once the sugar is melted.

  4. Quickly stir in the beaten egg whites.

Finish

  1. Spread the icing on the cake while it is still hot.

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
Dissolves and sets into a glossy, sweet coating as the icing cools.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded into the hot syrup, they add foam and structure for a light, fluffy texture.

The step that matters

Quickly stir in the beaten egg whites. Hot sugar syrup can cook the egg whites if they sit too long, and timing matters because the icing thickens as it cools. Stirring promptly keeps the foam smooth and the icing spreadable.

“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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