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Dessert

Gelatine Icing

A gelatin-based icing made with sugar, water, lemon juice, and egg whites.

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 ↓

Gelatine Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatine base

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in boiling water, then strain the mixture.

  2. Add sugar and lemon juice to flavor.

Whip and finish

  1. Beat 2 egg whites to stiff peaks.

  2. Gradually add 10 ounces of sugar while beating for at least 30 minutes.

  3. Flavor with lemon juice.

  4. Add color using strawberry, currant, or cranberry juice, or grated lemon/orange peel moistened with juice.

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 icing so it holds its shape as it cools.
Egg whites (in the method)
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air and give the icing its light, fluffy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the icing and, beaten in gradually, adds body and helps stabilize the foam.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar to the egg whites. Sugar must be added gradually while beating. Adding it all at once or too quickly can prevent the whites from reaching stiff peaks or cause the foam to collapse, so the icing loses its light texture.

“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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