Name: Rum, Brandy, Kirsch Icing
Ingredients: ½ cup rum or brandy or kirsch; powdered sugar

Why it works: Rum and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,908 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Rum, Brandy, Kirsch Icing

Ingredients

½ cup rum or brandy or kirsch
powdered sugar

Directions

Make the icing

In a bowl, combine ½ cup of rum, brandy, or kirsch with powdered sugar until thick enough to spread.

Ice and set

Cover the cake with the icing.
Let it sit in a cool place for 1 to 2 hours.
If a thicker icing is desired, spread a second layer over the first after an hour.

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.

Rum + sugartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,908 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

Rum, brandy, or kirsch: Provides liquid and flavour that thins the sugar into a spreadable icing.
Powdered sugar: Thickens with the liquid to form a sweet icing that sets as it rests.

“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.