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Dessert

Soft Frosting Without Eggs

A gelatin-based frosting made without eggs, sweetened with powdered sugar and flavored with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Soft Frosting Without Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the frosting

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in warm water.

  2. Strain the mixture through a cloth.

  3. Beat in enough powdered sugar to create a firm frosting.

  4. Flavor with lemon juice.

Scale up

  1. For a larger quantity, use 1½ pints of boiling water, 1½ tablespoons of gelatine, 3½ pounds of powdered sugar, and juice of 1 lemon.

  2. Dissolve the gelatine in the boiling water, then add the sugar and lemon juice.

  3. Let it stand for a few minutes.

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 + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, stable frosting structure as it cools.
Powdered sugar
Provides sweetness and bulk, stiffening the frosting along with the gelatine.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavour to balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatine fully before straining. Undissolved gelatine granules will not hydrate evenly, leaving lumps or weak spots, so the mixture must be fully dissolved and strained before the sugar is added to ensure a smooth, evenly set frosting.

“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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