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Dessert

Mocha Frosting

A frosting made from sugar, strong coffee, and egg white, boiled and beaten until stiff.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and coffee are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,344 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Mocha Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil sugar and coffee together until it threads.

  2. Pour the mixture into the beaten egg white.

  3. Beat until creamy and stiff enough to spread.

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 + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Coffee + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,239 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the frosting and, when boiled, forms a syrup that sets the frosting firm.
Strong coffee
Adds the mocha flavor and liquid to dissolve the sugar into a syrup.
Egg white
Whipped into a foam that gives the frosting its light, airy structure.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup into the egg white. The hot sugar syrup must be poured in while the egg white is beaten, so it blends into the foam rather than cooking or deflating it. Continued beating cools the mixture and builds the stiff, spreadable texture that holds 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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