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Dessert

Boiled Frosting

A frosting made by boiling sugar and water, then folding in beaten egg whites, vanilla, and optional cream of tartar or lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Boiled Frosting

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 Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

Make the frosting

  1. Combine sugar and water in a saucepan and boil until the mixture is clear.

  2. Beat the egg whites in a bowl until stiff peaks form.

  3. Remove the syrup from the heat and quickly add the beaten egg whites.

  4. Beat the mixture until cool, then add vanilla and a little cream of tartar or lemon to whiten.

Finish

  1. Spread the frosting on your cake with a knife before it hardens.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Vanilla + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

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

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

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

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
Forms the sweet syrup that becomes the frosting's body as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam that gives the frosting its light, airy structure.
Cream of tartar or lemon
Acidity stabilises the whipped egg whites and helps keep the frosting white.

The step that matters

Adding the hot syrup to the egg whites. Hot syrup must be poured in quickly while the whites are beaten, or it may cook the egg whites unevenly or deflate the foam. Beating until cool then sets the glossy, stable texture.

“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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