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Dessert

Hickory Nut Frosting

A frosting made with eggs, sugar, and finely chopped hickory nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Hickory Nut Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

Make the frosting

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add sugar to the eggs and mix well.

  3. Chop the hickory nuts very finely and mix them into the frosting.

Finish

  1. Spread the frosting thickly on the cake as desired.

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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  2. Tea + nutstop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + nutstop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,228 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Egg + nutstop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,624 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Tea + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,204 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten eggs give the frosting body and help it set as a soft, thick coating.
Sugar
Sugar sweetens the frosting and, when mixed with the eggs, thickens it into a spreadable texture.
Hickory nuts
Finely chopped nuts add crunch and a rich, nutty flavour to the frosting.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Cocoafits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, tea, sugar. 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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