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Dessert

Icing

A light icing made from beaten egg whites and sugar, optionally flavored with lemon, tartaric acid, or fruit juices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and strawberry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,206 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. Place the egg whites in a shallow dish.

  2. Sprinkle part of the sugar over the egg whites and beat for about 30 minutes.

  3. Gradually stir in the remaining sugar and add flavoring.

  4. For a pink color, add strawberry juice or cranberry syrup; for yellow, use lemon juice and rind.

Ice the cake

  1. Dredge the cake with flour after baking and wipe it before icing.

  2. Spread the frosting on the cake in large spoonfuls, starting from the center.

  3. Use a large knife dipped in cold water to smooth the frosting.

  4. Let the frosting dry in a cool, dry place.

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 + strawberrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,206 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + strawberrytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,060 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Egg + sugartop 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

Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that becomes the structure of the icing as it sets.
Sugar
Sweetens the icing and, dissolved into the beaten whites, helps it set smooth and glossy.

The step that matters

Beating the sugar into the egg whites. Sugar should be added in stages while beating so the whites hold a stable foam. Adding it all at once or underbeating can leave a weak, grainy icing that does not hold its shape or dry glossy.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, strawberry):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, strawberry. 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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