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Dessert

Plain Frosting

A simple frosting made from egg white, powdered sugar, and vanilla extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Plain Frosting

Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Plain Frosting

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the egg white until very stiff.

  2. Add the powdered sugar and vanilla extract, then beat all together for five minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

  3. 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 white
Whipped into a stiff foam that gives the frosting its light, airy structure.
Powdered sugar
Provides sweetness and body, stiffening the whipped foam into a spreadable frosting.

The step that matters

Beating the egg white until very stiff. Egg white foam holds air only when its proteins are fully whipped and firm. Under-whipped whites stay loose, so the frosting will be runny and will not hold its shape.

“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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