Skip to main content
Dessert

Water Frosting

A frosting made with powdered sugar, lemon juice, water, and optional cocoa or flavoring, suitable for spreading on cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cocoa and milk work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 643 recipes. Both carry methyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Water Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

Make the frosting

  1. In a bowl, combine powdered sugar and lemon juice.

  2. Add boiling water and flavoring extract, stirring until smooth.

  3. If needed, add more water or hot milk to achieve a smooth consistency for spreading on the cake.

Variation

  1. For variation, melted chocolate or vanilla can be used instead of lemon.

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. Cocoa + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + cocoatop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together198 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Powdered sugar
Provides sweetness and the bulk of the frosting body.
Boiling water
Dissolves the sugar and thins the frosting to a spreadable texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the sugar.

The step that matters

Adding the liquid. Powdered sugar absorbs liquid unevenly, so adding boiling water gradually and stirring until smooth prevents lumps and an overly thin frosting that will not hold on the cake.

Swap the cocoa

The recipe marks cocoa as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon, milk):

  1. Milletfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, milk. 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 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes