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Dessert

Almond Frosting

A frosting made from egg whites, sugar, almonds, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Almond Frosting

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the frosting

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Blanch the almonds and pound them in a mortar with a little sugar until a fine paste forms.

  3. Mix the almond paste with the egg whites and sugar, then add the vanilla extract.

  4. Pound the mixture for a few minutes to combine thoroughly.

Frost and dry

  1. Cover the cake with a thick layer of the frosting.

  2. Place the cake in a cool oven to dry.

Finish

  1. After drying, cover the cake with a plain icing.

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 + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 a stiff foam that gives the frosting its light, airy structure.
Sweet almonds
Provide the bulk, nutty flavor, and body of the frosting once ground into a paste.
Fine white sugar
Sweetens the frosting and helps stabilize the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Drying the frosted cake in a cool oven. A cool oven dries the surface of the almond and egg white layer slowly. Higher heat can brown or puff the coating before it has set, spoiling the smooth finish.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Hazelnutfits less well
  4. Macadamia nutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, vanilla. 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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