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Dessert

Directions for Frosting

A frosting made from beaten egg whites, powdered sugar, optional cornstarch, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Directions for Frosting

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the frosting

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth.

  2. Gradually add the powdered sugar while beating continuously until the icing is smooth, about 30 minutes.

  3. Add your chosen flavoring.

Frost the cake

  1. If the cake is rough or brown, dust it with flour and remove loose particles with a cloth.

  2. Pour the frosting around the center of the cake and smooth it with a knife.

  3. If the frosting is stiff, dip the knife in cold water.

  4. Frost the cake while it is still warm.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Sugar + rosetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,584 recipes

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

  5. Rose + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,643 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves into the foam to sweeten and firm the frosting as it sets.

The step that matters

Beating the sugar into the egg whites. Sugar must be added gradually while beating so the foam stays stable and smooth. Adding it all at once can collapse the foam or leave the icing grainy.

“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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