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Dessert

Divinity Fruit Icing

A sweet icing made from boiled sugars, beaten egg whites, and chopped nuts and dried fruits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and dates work together. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 318 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Divinity Fruit Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing base

  1. Combine brown sugar and a little water in a saucepan.

  2. Boil until it forms a hair-like thread when dripped from a spoon.

  3. Pour the hot brown sugar over the beaten egg whites and beat until it starts to thicken.

  4. Boil white sugar with water in another saucepan until it threads.

  5. Pour the hot white sugar over the mixture and beat until it thickens enough to spread.

Add fruit and nuts

  1. Fold in the chopped nuts, figs, raisins, and dates.

Finish

  1. Spread the icing on your cake.

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. Fig + datestop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together318 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  2. Fig + raisintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Nuts + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Raisin + datestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together358 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Nuts + figtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together154 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped into the hot syrup, they create a light, airy structure that thickens the icing.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the icing and adds a deeper, caramel-like flavour as it is cooked.
White sugar
Sweetens the icing and, cooked to a thread, helps it set firm enough to spread.
Chopped nuts
Add crunch and texture that contrasts with the soft, airy icing.
Chopped figs
Add chewy texture and concentrated natural sweetness to the icing.

The step that matters

Beating the hot syrup into the egg whites. The syrup must be boiled to the thread stage and poured hot while beating. Hot sugar syrup cooks the egg whites as it is whipped, building a stable foam; if the syrup is too cool or added too fast, the icing stays runny or deflates.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, fig, raisin, dates. 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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