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Dessert

Allegretti Frosting for Plain Cake

A frosting made from sugar, boiling water, cream of tartar, and egg whites, finished with melted chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Allegretti Frosting for Plain Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the frosting

  1. Boil sugar and water with cream of tartar until it threads.

  2. Pour the syrup over the beaten egg whites and beat until thick and creamy.

Finish the cake

  1. Let the frosting dry on the cake.

  2. Cover with melted Baker's bitter chocolate.

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. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg 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

Sugar
Sweetens the frosting and, cooked into a syrup, thickens it into a firm, glossy coating.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the frosting its light, airy body.
Cream of tartar
An acid that steadies the beaten egg white foam so it holds its volume.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiled syrup into the egg whites. The syrup must be cooked until it threads before it goes in. Pouring it in too early leaves the frosting thin, and it can cook the whites unevenly, so the foam will not reach a thick, creamy texture.

“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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