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Dessert

Frost or Icing for Cakes

A light, lemon-flavored frosting made from beaten egg whites and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Frost or Icing for Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. Beat the egg whites until very light.

  2. Gradually add the sugar, pounded and sifted.

  3. Mix in the lemon juice and beat until very light and white.

Finish the cake

  1. Place the cake before the fire.

  2. Pour the icing over the cake and smooth it over the top and sides with the back of a spoon.

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 + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 into foam that gives the icing its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Dissolves into the foam to sweeten and stiffen the icing so it holds its shape.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that helps stabilise the whipped egg white foam.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until very light. Egg white foam is what gives this icing its lightness. If the whites are under-whipped, the icing stays dense and runny, and if the sugar is added too fast, the foam can collapse. Adding the sugar gradually keeps the foam stable.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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