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Dessert

Fondant Icing

Fondant icing is a sugar syrup thickened to a soft ball, then cooled and beaten until white and creamy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Fondant Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar, water, and lemon juice in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir until the mixture boils.

  3. Wipe down the sides of the pan.

  4. Boil continuously without stirring until the syrup spins a heavy thread or forms a soft ball in ice water.

  5. Pour the syrup onto a greased platter or marble slab.

  6. Place the saucepan in cold water.

Beat and finish

  1. Once the syrup is cool but not cold, beat it continuously until it hardens and turns white.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a clean saucepan.

  3. Add flavoring and stir constantly until creamy.

  4. Add a few drops of water as needed to achieve the right consistency for dipping cakes.

Dip the cakes

  1. Dip small cakes into the fondant; it cannot be spread.

  2. Quickly turn the cakes over after dipping, as the fondant dries 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. 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

Sugar
Forms the crystalline base of the icing, which sets smooth and white when beaten.
Water
Dissolves the sugar so the syrup can be boiled to the right concentration.
Lemon juice
Acidity helps prevent the sugar from recrystallizing into a grainy texture.

The step that matters

Boil without stirring to the right stage. Stirring during boiling can trigger sugar crystals that make the fondant grainy. Testing for a soft ball or heavy thread confirms the syrup has reached the concentration needed to set smooth.

“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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