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Dessert

Burlington Icing

A sweet icing made from brown sugar and butter, finished with Jordan almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,245 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Burlington Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. Combine brown sugar and butter in a saucepan.

  2. Boil until the mixture hardens.

  3. Beat the mixture thoroughly until cool.

Finish and decorate

  1. Spread the icing on small cakes.

  2. Stick the points of Jordan almonds on top.

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. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Brown sugar
Provides sweetness and the caramel flavor and structure as the mixture cooks and sets.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture in the cooled icing.
Jordan almonds
Decorate the top of the icing, adding crunch and contrast in appearance.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture thoroughly until cool. Beating while the sugar mixture cools encourages fine sugar crystals to form, giving a smooth, spreadable icing rather than a grainy or hard one. Stopping early can leave it lumpy or too stiff to spread.

“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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