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Mrs. Wilson's Decorative and Plain Icing

A sugar-based icing made with egg whites, sugar syrup, lemon juice, and baking powder.

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 ↓

Mrs. Wilson's Decorative and Plain Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar and water and cook until the syrup drops thick from a spoon.

Make the icing

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff and smooth, then gradually add ½ cup of sugar.

  2. Slowly add the syrup to the egg whites, allowing it to cook until it threads.

  3. Beat well, then place over a pan of hot water and add baking powder.

  4. Cook until the icing holds its shape without sinking.

  5. For plain icing, less cooking is required; decorative icing can be smoothed with a spoon.

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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that traps air, giving the icing its light, stiff structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the icing and, cooked into syrup, helps it set firm and glossy.
Lemon juice
Acidity helps stabilise the beaten egg white foam so it holds its shape.

The step that matters

Adding the syrup to the egg whites. Pour the hot syrup slowly into the beaten whites while beating constantly. Pouring too fast can deflate the foam, and steady beating spreads the heat so the whites cook evenly and the icing stays smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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