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Dessert

Plain Vanilla Icing

A light icing made from egg white, confectioners' sugar, and vanilla extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Plain Vanilla Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. Break the egg white into a bowl.

  2. Gradually beat in the confectioners' sugar for three minutes.

  3. Add the vanilla extract and mix well.

Finish

  1. Spread the icing thinly on the cakes.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  3. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 white
Provides structure and body, helping the icing whip up and hold its shape.
Confectioners' sugar
Adds sweetness and bulk, forming the smooth body of the icing.
Vanilla extract
Adds aroma and flavor to the icing.

The step that matters

Gradually beat in the confectioners' sugar. Adding the sugar slowly lets it dissolve and blend evenly into the egg white, preventing lumps and a grainy texture in the finished icing.

“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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