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Dessert

Common Icing

A simple egg white icing made with sugar, water, and optional almond flavor.

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

Common Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. Beat the egg white to a stiff froth.

  2. Stir in pulverized sugar until thick.

Spread on the cake

  1. Use a knife dipped in hot water to spread frosting smoothly over the cake.

  2. Set the cake in a warm place for 4 to 5 minutes.

Flavor and frost the top

  1. Add almond extract and whole blanched almonds if desired.

  2. To frost only the top, apply frosting and wrap the sides with clean white paper to prevent overflow.

Make the boiled syrup icing

  1. In a clean saucepan, combine granulated sugar and water, stirring until dissolved.

  2. Boil without stirring until the syrup spins a heavy thread from a spoon.

  3. Beat the whites of 2 eggs to a very stiff froth.

  4. Gradually add the syrup while beating rapidly.

  5. Add cream of tartar and beat until cold and thick. Flavor to taste.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream 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

Egg white
Whipped into a foam that gives the icing its light, airy structure.
Granulated sugar
Dissolves and cooks into a syrup that sets into a sweet, thick icing.
Cream of tartar
Its acidity helps stabilize the whipped egg white foam so it stays stiff.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup to a heavy thread without stirring. Sugar syrup sets according to how far it is cooked. Stopping too early leaves the icing runny, while cooking too long makes it hard. Stirring can cause sugar crystals to form, which makes the icing grainy.

Swap the almond

The recipe marks almond as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, cream):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits less well
  4. Pecansfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, cream. 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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