Name: Icing, Vienna
Ingredients: 6 ounces fresh butter; ½ pound icing sugar; 2 teaspoons brandy; 2 teaspoons maraschino or other liqueur

Why it works: Butter and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,127 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Icing, Vienna

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

6 ounces fresh butter
½ pound icing sugar
2 teaspoons brandy
2 teaspoons maraschino or other liqueur

Directions

Make the icing

Beat the butter to a cream.
Add the icing sugar, brandy, and liqueur.
Work the mixture with a wooden spoon until creamy.
Color the icing if desired.

Decorate

Use a piping bag to squeeze the icing onto cakes and pastries for designs or messages.

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.

Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,127 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Butter: Creamed with air to give the icing a smooth, rich, spreadable body and fat flavour.
Icing sugar: Dissolves into the fat to sweeten the icing and firm it into a stable, pipeable texture.
Brandy: Adds aroma and flavour and thins the icing slightly for smoother working.
Maraschino or other liqueur: Adds sweet, fruity aroma and flavour to the icing.

“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.