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Dessert

Butter Icing

A simple frosting made from powdered sugar, melted butter, sweet cream, and optional flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Butter Icing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the powdered sugar and melted butter.

  2. Add sweet cream gradually until you reach the desired consistency.

  3. Add your choice of flavoring and mix well.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Powdered sugar
Provides sweetness and the bulk that gives the icing its body.
Melted butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture and mouthfeel.
Sweet cream
Adds liquid to thin the icing to a spreadable consistency.

The step that matters

Add sweet cream gradually. Powdered sugar absorbs liquid unevenly, so adding cream a little at a time lets you reach a smooth, spreadable consistency without overshooting into a runny icing that is hard to fix.

“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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