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Dessert

Lemon Icing

A citrus glaze made from lemon juice, sugar, water, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar 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 ↓

Lemon Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemon icing

  1. Add granulated sugar to the strained lemon juice until thick enough to spread.

  2. Spread the icing on the cake and let it dry in a cool place for 1 to 2 hours.

Make the syrup icing

  1. For simple icing, combine 1 cup of granulated sugar with 5 tablespoons of water in a saucepan.

  2. Stir until the sugar dissolves, then let it boil until it forms a continuous string when tested with a teaspoon.

  3. Beat the egg white until thoroughly mixed.

  4. Pour the thick syrup into the beaten egg white while someone else beats it continuously.

  5. Beat for 2 to 3 minutes until thick and creamy, then pour over the cake immediately.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Granulated sugar
Dissolves and thickens into the icing, adding sweetness and body; boiled, it forms the syrup.
Egg white
Whipped with the hot syrup, it traps air and sets the icing into a thick, creamy texture.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity and flavour, and thins the sugar into a spreadable icing.
Water
Dissolves the sugar so it can boil into a smooth syrup without crystallising.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup to a continuous thread. The syrup must reach the right concentration. Boiled too briefly, the icing stays runny; boiled too long, it sets hard and grainy once beaten into the egg white.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

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.

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