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Dessert

Fondant Icing

Fondant icing is a sugar glaze made by boiling sugar, water, and cream of tartar, then cooling, flavoring, and beating until white.

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

Fondant Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Mix cream of tartar with sugar.

  2. Add cold water and boil until a soft ball forms when dropped in cold water.

  3. Do not stir after it begins to boil.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

Finish and ice

  1. Flavor and beat until white.

  2. To ice small cakes, place some fondant in boiling water and stir until melted.

  3. Dip cakes using a fork.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Granulated sugar
Forms the bulk of the icing and sets firm and smooth as it cools and is beaten.
Cold water
Dissolves the sugar so it can be boiled into a syrup.
Cream of tartar
Acid that helps prevent crystallization, keeping the icing smooth rather than grainy.

The step that matters

Do not stir after the syrup begins to boil. Stirring once sugar syrup boils can trigger sugar crystals to form, which makes the fondant grainy instead of smooth. Cooking to the soft ball stage sets the texture as it cools and is beaten.

“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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