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Dessert

Chocolate Icing

A glossy chocolate icing made by combining sugar syrup, egg white, cream of tartar, and grated chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. Boil the sugar and water together until the syrup can form a string when poured from a spoon.

  2. Stir the grated chocolate into the beaten egg white with the cream of tartar.

  3. Slowly pour the boiling syrup onto the egg mixture while beating vigorously.

  4. Continue beating until the mixture cools and thickens.

Finish

  1. Spread the icing between the layers of cake and on top.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Cream + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + chocolatetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Dissolves into the syrup that gives the icing its sweetness and body.
Well-beaten egg white
Forms the airy foam that gives the icing its light, fluffy structure.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the beaten egg white so its foam holds together longer.
Unsweetened chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and color of the icing.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling syrup onto the egg white. The syrup must be poured slowly while beating vigorously so the hot syrup cooks the egg white gently into a smooth, thick foam instead of scrambling it into lumps.

“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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