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Dessert

Frosting for Cake

A light frosting made from beaten egg whites, sugar, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Frosting for Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the frosting

  1. Beat the egg whites until frothy.

  2. Sift the sugar through a fine sieve, adding it gradually while beating until stiff.

  3. Add lemon juice to taste and beat until light.

  4. If the frosting is too thick, add the white of another egg to smooth it out.

Frost the cake

  1. Frost the fruit cake as soon as it comes out of the oven, then add another layer when cool.

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 foam, they create the light, stable structure of the frosting.
Sugar
Dissolves into the whipped whites, adding sweetness and helping the foam hold its shape.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that helps stabilise the whipped egg white foam and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar gradually while beating. Sugar added all at once can deflate the foam. Adding it slowly while beating lets it dissolve and builds a stiff, glossy structure that holds its shape.

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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