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Dessert

Boiled Water Icing

A simple icing made by boiling sugar and water, then flavored and beaten until creamy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Boiled Water Icing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine the sugar and tepid water.

  2. Boil quickly for 7 to 8 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and add your chosen flavouring.

  4. Beat the mixture until creamy and use as desired.

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

What each ingredient does

White sugar
Forms the sweet body of the icing and, as it boils into syrup, sets to a smooth gloss.
Tepid water
Dissolves the sugar so it can be boiled into a syrup.

The step that matters

Boil quickly for 7 to 8 minutes. The syrup must reach the right concentration to set properly. Boiling too briefly leaves it runny, while boiling too long makes it hard and brittle once it cools. Beating while it cools then makes it creamy.

“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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