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Dessert

Ordinary Icing

A light, stiff icing made from beaten egg whites, sugar, and vanilla or lemon essence, baked to harden.

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 ↓

Ordinary Icing

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the icing

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth.

  2. Stir in the sugar and flavor with essence.

  3. Continue beating until the mixture is light and very white, but not as stiff as meringue.

Ice and dry the cake

  1. Spread the icing over a hot cake.

  2. Smooth with a flat spoon or broad knife.

  3. Place the cake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) to dry and harden.

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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the icing its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the icing and, dissolved into the foam, helps it hold a glossy, stable body.

The step that matters

Continue beating until light and very white, but not as stiff as meringue. Overbeating egg whites past this point makes them dry and grainy, and the icing can break or crack when spread. Stopping at a soft, glossy stage keeps it smooth and spreadable while it still sets in the oven.

“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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