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Dessert

Ornamental Frosting

A stiff, lemon-flavored frosting made by beating egg whites and confectioners' sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar 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 ↓

Ornamental Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

Make the frosting

  1. Combine egg whites and 2 tablespoons of sugar in a large bowl.

  2. Beat for 3 minutes with a wooden spoon.

  3. Gradually add 1½ cups of confectioners' sugar, continuing to beat until the mixture thickens.

  4. Add lemon juice gradually, and keep adding sugar by spoonfuls until the frosting is stiff enough to spread.

  5. To check consistency, take some frosting on the back of a spoon and cut through it with a knife; it should part cleanly.

Decorate the cake

  1. Spread a thin layer of frosting on the cake.

  2. Once hardened, apply a thicker layer with a stiffer consistency.

  3. For decoration, add more sugar to the remaining frosting so it holds shape when piped through a pastry bag.

  4. Use a pastry bag with various tubes to ornament the cake as desired.

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

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the frosting its airy structure and body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that helps stabilise the whipped egg white foam.
Confectioners' sugar
Sweetens and, as it is beaten in, stiffens the foam so it holds its shape.

The step that matters

Adding sugar and lemon juice gradually. Egg white foam is fragile. Adding sugar and acid slowly lets the foam stiffen evenly. Adding too much sugar at once can make the frosting dense and brittle, while too little leaves it runny and unable to hold its shape for piping.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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