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Dessert

Almond Icing

A smooth almond icing made from icing sugar, almond paste, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,679 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Almond Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. Mix the icing sugar and almond paste together.

  2. Break the whole egg into the mixture and mix until you have a smooth, stiff paste.

Roll and apply

  1. Sprinkle a board with icing sugar and roll the paste out to the required thickness to cover the cake.

  2. Brush the cake with egg white to help the icing adhere.

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 + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Almond + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Icing sugar
Adds sweetness and bulk, and keeps the paste from sticking while rolling.
Almond paste
Provides the main almond flavour and the dense, pliable body of the icing.
Whole egg
Binds the sugar and almond paste into a smooth, stiff paste that holds its shape.

The step that matters

Mixing to a smooth, stiff paste. If the paste is too wet it becomes sticky and hard to roll, and if it is too dry it cracks at the edges. Mixing until smooth and evenly bound gives a pliable icing that rolls out evenly and drapes over the cake without tearing.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Milletfits 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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