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Dessert

To Make Water Icing

A simple icing made by mixing powdered sugar with cold water, cream of tartar, and optional coloring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

To Make Water Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. Combine powdered sugar with enough cold water to form a thick paste.

  2. Beat the mixture well.

  3. If it is too thin, add more powdered sugar.

  4. For every pound of sugar, add 1 level teaspoon of cream of tartar.

Finish and decorate

  1. Spread the icing over the cake with a knife and let it dry.

  2. Decorate with icing sugar or sweet jelly, like red currant or quince.

  3. Optionally, color the icing with a light shade of pink using cochineal or a light cream color with saffron.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Powdered sugar
Forms the bulk of the icing and provides its sweetness and set-firm body.
Cold water
Dissolves the sugar into a spreadable paste that dries to a smooth coat.
Cream of tartar
Adds acidity that helps keep the icing smooth and stops it from turning grainy.

The step that matters

Adding water gradually. Too much water makes the paste thin and runny, so it will not hold on the cake. Add water slowly and stop once the paste is thick, then add more sugar if needed.

“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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