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Dessert

Hickory-nut Icings

A sweet icing made from cream, hickory nuts, sugar, water, cream of tartar, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

Hickory-nut Icings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cream and nuts

  1. In a basin, dissolve 10 pounds of cream.

  2. Stir in 3 pounds of hickory nuts and pour into a tray, spreading to an even thickness.

  3. Once cold, mark with a caramel marker.

Make the icing

  1. In a pot, combine 10 pounds of sugar, 3 pints of water, and 1 teaspoon of cream of tartar; cook to a strong ball stage.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then whip in the whites of 4 eggs until foamy and pure white.

  3. Stir in 3 pounds of hickory nuts and pour into a tray, spreading to an even thickness.

  4. Finish as before.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Cream + nutstop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

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

  4. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Nuts + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,228 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the icing a soft, smooth body.
Hickory nuts
Add nutty flavor and a textured, crunchy bite throughout the icing.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and, when cooked to a ball stage, sets firm as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam, they lighten the icing and give it a white, airy texture.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes whipped egg whites and helps keep the cooked sugar smooth.

The step that matters

Cooking the sugar to a strong ball stage. Sugar syrup must be cooked to the right point: too short and the icing stays soft and runny, too long and it turns hard and brittle as it cools. Cream of tartar helps prevent grainy crystals forming in the syrup.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar, egg):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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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