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Dessert

Frosting: for Cakes

A light, glossy frosting made from egg whites, sugar, lemon juice, and flavoring.

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: for Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Ensure all ingredients and the bowl are cold.

Make the frosting

  1. In a deep bowl, combine 4 egg whites and all the sugar.

  2. Beat together with a wooden paddle for about 15 minutes.

  3. Add 1 more egg white and beat for an additional 5 minutes until stiff.

  4. Squeeze in 1 teaspoon of lemon juice and add flavoring.

  5. Add the remaining egg white and beat briefly to make the frosting glossy.

Frost the cake

  1. Trim the cake, cover the hole with writing paper, and spread the frosting over the top and sides.

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

Fine granulated sugar
Dissolves into the whites to sweeten and give the frosting a smooth, glossy body.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that sets into a light, stiff frosting structure.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that helps stabilise the whipped egg white foam and keeps it from collapsing.

The step that matters

Beating the whites until stiff. The whites must be whipped to a firm foam with the sugar dissolved into it. Underbeaten, the foam stays runny and collapses; overbeaten, it turns dry and grainy. Cold ingredients and a clean bowl help the whites reach full volume.

Swap the lemon

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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