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Dessert

Ornamental Frosting

A light, frothy frosting made from powdered sugar, lemon juice, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Ornamental Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

Make the frosting

  1. Beat the egg white until frothy but not dry.

  2. Sprinkle in 3 teaspoons of powdered sugar and beat for 5 minutes.

  3. Add 1 teaspoon of powdered sugar every 5 minutes until the mixture is thick.

  4. Stir in the lemon juice.

  5. Beat with a fork until the mixture can hold a point.

Decorate

  1. Press through a pastry tube onto a cake that is covered with smooth frosting.

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 + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and lemon 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 white
Its proteins trap air when beaten, forming a foam that gives the frosting its structure and body.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the frosting and, as it is beaten in, thickens the foam into a stiff, piping-ready mixture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that helps stabilise the egg white foam and gives a slight tang that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the powdered sugar gradually. Egg white foam is fragile. Adding sugar a little at a time, with beating in between, lets the foam absorb it and stay stiff. Dumping in too much at once can collapse the foam and leave the frosting thin.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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