Name: Quick Frosting
Ingredients: 1 egg white; powdered sugar (to taste); water (for dipping knife)

Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Quick Frosting

Ingredients

1 egg white
powdered sugar (to taste)
water (for dipping knife)

Directions

In a bowl, stir the egg white and gradually add powdered sugar until it reaches a thick consistency.
Spread the frosting on the cake.
Smooth the frosting with a knife dipped in water as needed.

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.

Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg white: Whisked with powdered sugar to form a thick, spreadable frosting that sets smooth.
Powdered sugar: Adds sweetness and bulk, thickening the egg white into a spreadable frosting.

“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.