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Dessert

Boiled Icing

A boiled icing made from sugar, water, egg whites, lemon juice, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. Boil 1 pound of sugar with ½ pint of water until it ropes.

  2. Slowly stir in the beaten egg whites until smooth and thick.

  3. Add lemon juice to taste.

Second icing

  1. For the second icing, mix 3 tablespoons of powdered sugar with the white of each egg before beating.

  2. Beat until very thick and white, then flavor with lemon juice.

Finish and decorate

  1. Apply with a knife, dipping the blade in cold water for smoothness.

  2. For decorative icing, use a paper cone to pipe flowers and leaves.

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 + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Sweetens the icing and, when boiled to a rope, forms the syrup that sets the icing.
Egg whites
Form a foam that gives the icing body, volume and a light, thick texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the flavor.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the egg whites, sweetening and smoothing the second icing.

The step that matters

Pour the hot syrup slowly into the egg whites. Adding the boiled sugar syrup gradually while beating lets it cool and spread evenly, so the egg whites stay foamy and do not cook into lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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