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Dessert

A Cawfa'ow

A frosting made from sugar, egg yolks, and lemon juice, colorable with various natural dyes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Saffron and tea work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and 13 recipes mention both. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Make the frosting

  1. Beat together 1 cup of white sugar and the yolks of 3 eggs.

  2. Flavor with a few drops of lemon juice.

Color the frosting

  1. For amber coloring, dissolve ½ oz. turmeric in 2 oz. deodorized alcohol, strain, and bottle for use.

  2. For brown frosting, add caramel to gelatine frosting or beat egg whites with maple sugar.

  3. For chocolate color, add a little chocolate or cocoa.

  4. For pink frosting, add strained cranberry, strawberry, or raspberry juice, or use cochineal.

  5. For yellow frosting, add a little strong saffron tea or use grated orange rind soaked in orange juice.

  6. For a pretty tint, use the mixture of sugar and egg yolks.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Saffron + teatop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together13 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Lemon + saffrontop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together538 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Turmeric + saffrontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together238 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Lemon + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,192 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lemon + teatop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together610 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

White sugar
Provides sweetness and bulk, dissolving into the yolks to form the frosting body.
Egg yolks
Add richness and emulsifying fat that give the frosting a smooth, creamy texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Beat together the sugar and egg yolks. Beating sugar into yolks dissolves the sugar and incorporates air, producing a smooth, glossy frosting. Under-beaten mixtures stay grainy and can separate or look dull.

Flavor stand-ins for the turmeric

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, lemon, cream, chocolate, cranberry, strawberry):

  1. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  2. Peppermintbetter flavor fit
  3. Nutmegbetter flavor fit
  4. Turmericthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, lemon, cream, chocolate, cranberry, strawberry. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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