Skip to main content
Dessert

Asquam Frosting

A frosting made from egg white, powdered sugar, rose water, vanilla extract, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Asquam Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the egg white and powdered sugar in a bowl without beating the egg.

  2. Add the rose water, vanilla extract, and lemon juice.

  3. Mix until the frosting becomes very white and thickens quickly.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Rose + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,174 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Rose + vanillatop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together456 recipes

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

  4. Vanilla + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 white
Provides the base structure that traps sugar and air to form a thick, smooth frosting.
Powdered sugar
Provides sweetness and bulk, dissolving into the egg white to thicken the frosting.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and helps stabilize the whipped egg white.

The step that matters

Mix until the frosting becomes very white and thickens quickly. Mixing too little leaves the sugar gritty and the frosting runny, while overmixing can make it stiff and dull. Stop when it is glossy and thick enough to hold its shape.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raspberryfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes