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Dessert

White Frosting

A glossy icing made from sugar syrup, egg white, vinegar, and vanilla.

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

White Frosting

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar and boiling water.

  2. Cook until it forms a hair-like thread when dropped from a spoon.

Make the frosting

  1. Slowly pour the hot syrup over the beaten egg white while mixing continuously.

  2. Continue to beat until the mixture is stiff and glossy.

  3. Add a little vanilla extract and mix well.

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

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

  2. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Vinegar + vanillatop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

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

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
Dissolves into the syrup that gives the frosting its sweetness and body.
Egg white
Whipped into a foam that traps air and sets into a light, stable structure.
Vinegar
Adds a little acidity that helps stabilize the beaten egg white foam.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup into the egg white. The syrup must be hot enough and poured slowly while beating, so it cooks the egg white gently and forms a smooth, stable foam instead of clumping or deflating.

“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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