Skip to main content
Dessert

Nut Frosting

A sweet frosting made with sugar, egg white, water, lemon flavoring, and chopped nuts.

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

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 ↓

Nut Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and water in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat until the mixture reaches a soft ball stage.

Finish the frosting

  1. Beat the egg white until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gradually pour the hot sugar mixture into the beaten egg white while continuing to beat.

  3. Add lemon flavoring and mix well.

  4. Fold in the coarsely chopped nuts until evenly distributed.

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).

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + nutstop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Sugar + nutstop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,228 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

Sugar
Dissolves into the water and cooks to a syrup that sets and sweetens the frosting.
Egg white
Whips into a foam that gives the frosting its light, airy structure.
Nuts
Add crunch and texture to the frosting.

The step that matters

Gradually pour the hot sugar mixture into the beaten egg white while continuing to beat. Pouring the syrup in slowly while beating lets it cook the egg white gently and build a stable, glossy foam. Pouring it all at once can deflate the whites or leave lumps of cooked sugar.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Milletfits better
  3. Almondfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, lemon. 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.

More nut frosting recipes

Hickory 4 See all 2 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes