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Dessert

Honey Icing

A glaze made by boiling honey, mixing with beaten egg whites, and adding lemon extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Honey and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,707 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Honey Icing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the honey until it forms a firm ball when tested in cold water.

  2. Pour the hot honey slowly over the beaten egg whites.

  3. Beat the mixture until it cools.

  4. Add a few drops of lemon extract for flavor.

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. Honey + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,707 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  3. Honey + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Honey
Provides sweetness and, once boiled, sets firm as it cools, giving the icing body.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that traps air and gives the icing a light, airy structure.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot honey slowly over the egg whites. Hot syrup partly cooks the whites as it is beaten in. Pouring slowly while beating keeps the mixture smooth and prevents lumps or scrambled, deflated egg.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against honey, 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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