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Recipe for Royal Icing

A smooth, thick icing made from icing sugar, egg white, and lemon juice, used for decorating plums or dates.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Recipe for Royal Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. In a bowl, mix the icing sugar with the well-beaten egg white using a wooden spoon.

  2. Add a small squeeze of strained lemon juice and work into a smooth, thick paste.

  3. If the mixture is too thick, add more lemon juice.

Decorate and dry

  1. Lightly dust the surface of plums or dates with a small amount of icing sugar.

  2. Transfer the royal icing into a piping bag with a fine nozzle.

  3. Gently pipe the icing to create patterns or rosettes on the plums.

  4. Place the decorated plums on a tray to dry, ensuring they stand on the cream to avoid disturbing the patterns.

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

Icing sugar
Provides the sweet bulk and fine solid structure that sets the icing.
Egg white
Binds the sugar into a smooth paste that dries firm and glossy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity to brighten flavour and helps adjust the icing's consistency.

The step that matters

Getting the paste consistency right. If the icing is too thick it will not pipe smoothly through a fine nozzle, and if too thin it will spread and lose its pattern. Adding lemon juice a little at a time lets you reach a smooth, thick paste that holds its shape as it dries.

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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