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Dessert

Confectioners' Frosting

A simple frosting made by mixing boiling water or cream with confectioners' sugar and flavored with vanilla or fruit juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Confectioners' Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine boiling water or cream with sifted confectioners' sugar gradually.

  2. Stir until the mixture reaches a spreadable consistency.

  3. Flavor with Royce's vanilla or substitute with fresh fruit juice.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Confectioners' sugar
Provides the sweetness and bulk that thicken into a frosting.
Boiling water or cream
Dissolves the sugar and gives the frosting its spreadable, smooth texture.
Royce's vanilla
Adds aroma and a rounded flavor to the sweet frosting.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar gradually. Sugar added all at once to the liquid can form lumps that stay in the frosting. Adding it slowly and stirring lets the sugar dissolve evenly, giving a smooth, spreadable result.

“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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