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Dessert

Boiled Icing

A stiff icing made by beating egg whites, baking powder, and boiled sugar syrup, flavored before spreading.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Icing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth.

  2. Beat the baking powder into the froth.

  3. Boil the sugar and water until it threads freely.

  4. Pour the syrup slowly into the froth while beating continuously.

  5. Continue beating until the mixture stiffens enough to spread easily.

  6. Add flavoring just before spreading.

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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the icing its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Boiled with water into a syrup that sets and sweetens the icing as it cools.
Baking powder
Added to the froth to help keep the whipped foam light and stable.

The step that matters

Pour the syrup slowly into the froth while beating continuously. Hot syrup poured in a thin stream and beaten constantly is evenly incorporated into the foam. Pouring it in quickly or without beating can deflate the whites and leave the icing lumpy or unevenly set.

“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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