Why it works: Sugar and spinach are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 32% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,033 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
Green Transparent Icing
Ingredients
Directions
Make the icing
Boil the sugar until it reaches the crack stage.
Color the icing with extract of spinach.
Flavor with white liqueur, preferably cedrati.
Use
Use as needed for icing cakes.
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.
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Sugar + spinachtop 32% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,033 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sugar
- Boiled to the crack stage, it sets into a firm, glossy icing structure.
- Extract of spinach
- Provides the green colour of the icing.
- White liqueur
- Adds aromatic flavour to the icing.
The step that matters
Boil the sugar until it reaches the crack stage. Sugar must reach the correct temperature to set properly. Too little cooking leaves the icing soft and runny, while overcooking makes it hard and brittle once cooled.
“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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