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Dessert

Almond Icing for Cakes

A sweet almond paste used as a glaze for cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,125 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Almond Icing for Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. Blanch the sweet and bitter almonds.

  2. Pound them in a mortar to a smooth paste, adding a little orange‑flower water occasionally.

  3. Mix in the sifted sugar and enough egg white to form a soft, stiff paste.

Ice and dry the cake

  1. Spread the icing over the top of a baked cake, about ½ inch thick, as smoothly as possible.

  2. Place the cake in a cool place to dry for about one day.

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. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

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

  2. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Sweet almonds
Provide the main body of the paste, giving the icing its bulk and nutty flavour.
Sifted sugar
Sweetens the icing and helps it firm up as it dries.
Egg white
Binds the ground almonds and sugar into a paste that holds its shape when spread.

The step that matters

Pounding the almond paste. The almonds must be ground until completely smooth, since any gritty pieces stay visible on the finished icing. Adding orange-flower water a little at a time keeps the paste moist without making it runny, and the egg white is added only until the paste is soft yet stiff enough to spread.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, 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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