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Sugar Icings and Glazings, for Cakes, Etc.

A sweet icing made from icing sugar, egg whites, and lemon juice, used to coat cakes.

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 ↓

Sugar Icings and Glazings, for Cakes, Etc.

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. In a bowl, combine icing sugar and egg whites without whisking.

  2. Beat the mixture well with a wooden spoon or fork.

  3. Add lemon juice a few drops at a time until a smooth paste forms.

Finish and decorate

  1. Spread the icing evenly over a cooled baked cake using wet hands.

  2. If desired, color the icing with cochineal or other food coloring.

  3. For decorative icing, place a small amount in a paper cone and squeeze to create designs.

  4. To glaze pastry, dip it in liquid caramel or sift powdered sugar on top and melt with a salamander or hot shovel.

  5. Dry the icing in a cool oven.

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. Sugar + eggtop 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

Icing sugar
Forms the bulk of the icing and sets into a smooth, sweet coating.
Egg whites
Bind the sugar into a paste and help the icing set firm.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity to balance sweetness and helps keep the icing smooth.

The step that matters

Adding lemon juice. Add it a few drops at a time. Icing sugar absorbs liquid unevenly, and too much juice at once makes the paste runny and hard to bring back to a spreadable consistency.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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