Name: Almond Frosting
Ingredients: ½ cup blanched almonds; 3 egg whites; ¾ cup powdered sugar; 1 teaspoon Strong’s Essence Vanilla

Why it works: Almond and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Almond Frosting

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

½ cup blanched almonds
3 egg whites
¾ cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon Strong’s Essence Vanilla

Directions

Blanch the almonds and pound them in a mortar until pulverized.
In a bowl, mix the egg whites and powdered sugar until well combined.
Flavor the mixture with Strong's Essence Vanilla and add the pulverized almonds.
Use this frosting to top your cake layers.

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.

Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,961 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together35,032 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,679 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together27,347 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 whites: Whipped or mixed with sugar to give the frosting its body and light structure.
Powdered sugar: Dissolves into the egg whites to provide sweetness and a smooth, spreadable texture.
Blanched almonds: Pounded fine to add nutty flavor and a slightly grainy richness to the frosting.