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Dessert

Boiled White Icing

A clear icing made by boiling sugar syrup and folding in beaten egg whites, flavored with lemon and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Boiled White Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar, boiling water, and corn syrup in a saucepan.

  2. Boil until it reaches the soft ball stage.

Make the icing

  1. Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gently pour a little of the hot syrup into the beaten egg whites while mixing.

  3. Return the saucepan to the stove to keep the syrup hot.

  4. Continue adding syrup gradually while beating.

  5. Once all syrup is added, beat until the icing is thick enough to stay on the cake without running off.

  6. Flavor the icing with lemon and vanilla extracts.

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 + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Syrup + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

Granulated sugar
Dissolves in boiling water and sets into a syrup that gives the icing its sweetness and body.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that gives the icing its light, airy structure.
Corn syrup
Helps keep the cooked sugar smooth and prevents grainy crystals from forming.

The step that matters

Adding the hot syrup to the egg whites. Pour the syrup slowly while beating constantly. Pouring too fast can deflate the whipped whites or leave the icing unevenly cooked, and the syrup must be hot enough to cook the egg whites slightly and stabilize the foam.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, corn, syrup, egg, vanilla):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, corn, syrup, egg, vanilla. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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