Why it works: Saffron and spirit work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 69 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓
Sugar Icing
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the icing
Combine the sugar and starch, 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 adding it to the icing until the desired tint is achieved.
Set aside a small amount of icing for decoration.
Ice and dry the cake
Spread the icing smoothly over the cake with a knife once it comes out of the oven.
Dry the icing in a cool oven.
Decorate
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.
-
Saffron + spirittop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together69 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
-
Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
-
Sugar + spirittop 25% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together602 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
-
Sugar + saffrontop 30% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together650 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
-
Egg + saffrontop 32% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together535 recipes
Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
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 sweet, bulk body of the icing once whipped with the whites.
- Egg whites
- Whipped into a foam that gives the icing its light, airy structure.
- Fine white starch
- Lightens the sugar so the icing stays smooth and tender when dried.
The step that matters
Beating the egg whites. Whites must be beaten to a stable foam before the sugar is added; under-beaten whites will not hold air, and the icing will be dense and may weep.
Swap the saffron
The recipe marks saffron as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, spirit):
- Cinnamonfits better
- Nutmegfits better
- Gingerfits better
- Saffronthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, 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.
More sugar icing recipes
You might also like
White Cake431 recipes
Pound Cake373 recipes
Orange Bundt Cake349 recipes
Spice Cake344 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.