Why it works: Saffron and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 149 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓
Sugar Icing
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the icing
Combine the sugar and starch in a bowl and pound finely together, then sift through gauze.
Beat the egg whites until frothy, ensuring to beat in one direction.
Gradually add the powdered sugar to the egg whites, continuing to whip for an additional 30 minutes.
If coloring the icing, mix the coloring with a little colorless spirit before stirring it into the icing until the desired tint is achieved.
Set aside a small amount of icing for decoration.
Ice and decorate
Spread the icing smoothly over the cake with a spatula once it comes out of the oven.
To decorate, create a cone from stiff paper and squeeze the colored icing through it to form designs.
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.
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Saffron + spinachtop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together149 recipes
Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
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Saffron + spirittop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together69 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + spinachtop 22% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,323 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
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Sugar + spirittop 25% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together602 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Extra refined sugar
- Forms the bulk of the icing and provides its sweetness and smooth body.
- Fine white starch
- Helps keep the powdered sugar fine and the icing from becoming gritty.
- Egg whites
- Whipped to a foam, they give the icing its light body and set structure.
The step that matters
Beating the egg whites. Beating the whites until frothy and whipping in one direction helps build a stable foam. Overbeating or mixing unevenly can collapse it or make the icing dense and unevenly textured.
Swap the saffron
The recipe marks saffron as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, spinach, spirit):
- Cinnamonfits better
- Nutmegfits better
- Saffronthe original
- Gingerfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, spinach, spirit. 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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