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Dessert

Ornamental Frosting

A stiff, lemon-flavored frosting made from egg whites and confectioners' sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar 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 ↓

Ornamental Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

Make the frosting

  1. In a large bowl, beat the egg whites for 3 minutes.

  2. Gradually add 2 tablespoons of confectioners' sugar and continue beating.

  3. Repeat until you've used 1½ cups of sugar.

  4. Add lemon juice gradually as the mixture thickens.

  5. Continue adding sugar by spoonfuls until the frosting is stiff enough to spread.

  6. If frosting is too stiff, thin it with a few drops of water.

Frost and decorate

  1. Spread a thin layer of frosting on the cake and let it harden.

  2. Apply a thicker layer of frosting, creasing it for cutting.

  3. Use a pastry bag and various tubes to decorate the cake as desired.

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

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they trap air and give the frosting its light, stiff structure.
Confectioners' sugar
Sweetens the frosting and, added gradually, stiffens the whipped whites into a spreadable body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that helps stabilize the whipped egg white foam and brightens the sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar gradually. Egg white foam can collapse if sugar is dumped in at once. Adding it in small amounts while beating lets the proteins stay stable and build a stiff, glossy meringue-like frosting.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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