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Dessert

Soft Frosting for Cake

A soft frosting made from flour, water, sugar, butter, and flavoring, topped with coconut or chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Soft Frosting for Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Combine flour and enough water to make a stiff paste.

  2. Place in a double boiler and cook thoroughly.

  3. Let cool.

Finish the frosting

  1. Add sugar and whipped butter gradually, mixing well.

  2. Add flavoring to taste.

  3. Sprinkle coconut or chocolate on top before serving.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

All-purpose flour
Cooked into a stiff paste that thickens and gives the frosting its body.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the frosting its smooth, soft texture.
Unsalted butter
Adds richness and a creamy, soft mouthfeel to the frosting.

The step that matters

Cook the flour paste thoroughly. Flour must be fully cooked in the double boiler so its starch gelatinizes and the raw, pasty taste disappears. Undercooked flour leaves a floury flavor and a grainy texture.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutthe original
  4. Strawberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, 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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