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Dessert

Boiled Icing

A boiled sugar icing made with sugar, cream of tartar, boiling water, and 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar, cream of tartar, and boiling water.

  2. Boil until it spins a long thread.

Whip and finish

  1. Beat the egg white to stiff peaks.

  2. Slowly pour the syrup over the egg white while beating continuously until the mixture is cold and thick.

  3. Add desired flavoring.

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
Provides the sweetness and the sugar syrup that gives the icing its body.
Egg white
Whipped into a foam that gives the icing its light, airy structure.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the syrup, helping keep the icing smooth and stable.

The step that matters

Pouring the syrup into the egg white. The syrup must be hot enough to reach the thread stage and poured slowly while beating. Pouring too fast can deflate the whipped egg white, and beating until cold and thick lets the foam set into a stable icing.

“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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