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Dessert

Orange Frosting

A frosting made from egg yolk, orange juice, lemon juice, and confectioners' sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the egg yolk, orange juice, and lemon juice.

  2. Gradually add confectioners' sugar until the desired spreading consistency is reached.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + spreadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Lemon + spreadtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together85 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl acetate (pineapple, fruity).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the frosting into a smooth, creamy texture.
Orange juice
Provides liquid and the orange flavor that defines this frosting.
Confectioners' sugar
Forms the body of the frosting, and its amount sets how thick it spreads.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, lemon, sugar, spread. 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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