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Dessert

Boiled Milk Icing

A sweet glaze made by boiling sugar, butter, and milk, then flavored and beaten until creamy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boiled Milk Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. In an enamel pot, combine sugar, butter, and milk.

  2. Boil for 8 to 10 minutes, stirring constantly, then remove from heat.

Finish and spread

  1. Add flavouring and beat until white and creamy.

  2. Spread over the cake with a knife.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

White sugar
Provides sweetness and body, and sets the icing's firmness as it cools and thickens.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, soft mouthfeel.
Milk
Dissolves the sugar and supplies the liquid that gives the icing its creamy texture.

The step that matters

Boil for 8 to 10 minutes, stirring constantly. Boiling concentrates the sugar, so the boil time controls how firm the icing becomes once beaten. Constant stirring stops sugar from sticking and scorching on the base of the pot.

“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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