Why it works: Sugar and egg 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 ↓
Golden Icing
Ingredients
Directions
Boil 2 cups of sugar with enough water to dissolve it until it forms threads.
Stir the hot syrup into 3 thoroughly beaten egg yolks.
Add flavoring to taste.
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.
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Sugar
- Sweetens the icing and, when boiled into syrup, sets the texture of the finished icing.
- Egg yolks
- Enrich the icing and help it become smooth and thick when combined with the hot syrup.
The step that matters
Stir the hot syrup into the egg yolks. Pouring hot syrup into yolks too quickly, or without stirring, can scramble the eggs and leave lumps. Beating the yolks well and adding the syrup gradually keeps the mixture smooth.
“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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