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Dessert

Frosting

A simple frosting made from boiled sugar and beaten egg whites, optionally flavored with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Moisten the sugar with enough water to dissolve it when heated.

  2. Boil the sugar until it threads from the spoon, stirring often.

Whip and finish

  1. Beat the egg whites in a deep dish until firm.

  2. Once the sugar is boiled, pour it over the egg whites while beating rapidly until the mixture reaches a spreadable consistency.

  3. Flavor with lemon if 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. 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

Granulated sugar
Dissolved and boiled into a syrup that sets and sweetens the frosting.
Egg whites
Whipped to foam, giving the frosting its light, airy structure.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup into the whites while beating. The syrup must be hot enough to cook the egg whites slightly and beaten in rapidly so it spreads evenly without deflating the foam or forming lumps. Pouring slowly and beating constantly keeps the mixture smooth and stable.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. 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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