Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Icing

A simple chocolate icing made from cocoa, powdered sugar, egg whites, and optional hot water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Chocolate Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. Place the cocoa in a basin and set it in boiling water until dissolved.

  2. Add powdered sugar to taste and mix well.

  3. Incorporate the whisked egg whites for gloss.

Spread

  1. Spread the chocolate evenly on the cake with a knife while it’s still warm.

  2. For a simpler icing, use only cocoa and egg whites.

  3. For a moister icing, add 1 tablespoon of hot water to the cocoa.

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 + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  2. Cocoa + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together956 recipes

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

  3. Cocoa + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together582 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Cocoa
Provides the chocolate flavour and the body of the icing.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the icing and thickens it as it is mixed in.
Egg whites
Add gloss and help the icing set with a smooth sheen.

The step that matters

Spread the chocolate while it is still warm. As the icing cools it thickens and sets, so spreading it while warm gives an even layer; once cold it becomes hard to spread smoothly.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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.

You might also like

Coconut PuddingCoconut Pudding26 recipesCoconut CakeCoconut Cake17 recipesCocoa Nut CandyCocoa Nut Candy11 recipesCocoa Nut PuddingCocoa Nut Pudding9 recipes