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Dessert

Excellent Icing

A light, airy icing made from sugar, egg whites, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Excellent Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and boiling water in a saucepan.

  2. Bring to a boil and cook for about 1 minute, being careful not to let it thread.

Make the icing

  1. Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Add cream of tartar and baking powder to the beaten egg whites.

  3. Gradually pour the hot syrup into the egg mixture while continuously beating.

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. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream 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

Sugar
Dissolves into the syrup to provide sweetness and the body of the icing.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the icing its light, airy structure.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the egg whites, helping the foam stay stable and hold its peaks.
Baking powder
Adds a small amount of lift to the whipped egg white foam.

The step that matters

Gradually pour the hot syrup into the egg mixture while beating. Pouring the hot syrup slowly while beating lets it cook the egg whites and set them into a glossy, stable foam. Pouring it in all at once can deflate the foam and leave the icing dense.

“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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