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Dessert

Boiled Icing

A sweet icing made by mixing boiled sugar syrup with beaten egg white, flavored with rose water and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Boiled Icing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the egg white until stiff peaks form.

  2. In a saucepan, combine sugar and water, and bring to a boil.

  3. Once boiling, carefully pour the hot syrup over the beaten egg white while stirring constantly.

  4. Continue stirring until the mixture cools down.

  5. Add a few drops of rose water and vanilla extract to flavor.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Rose + vanillatop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together456 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Sugar + rosetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,584 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Sugar
Dissolves into the boiled syrup to form the sweet base of the icing.
Egg white
Whips into a foam that gives the icing its light, airy structure.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup over the egg white. The syrup must be boiling and poured in a thin, steady stream while whisking constantly. Hot syrup cooks the egg white gently, and stirring keeps it from scrambling or deflating into a dense, grainy 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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