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Dessert

White Frosting

A light, stiff frosting made from whipped egg white and powdered sugar, flavored and optionally colored.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

White Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

Make the frosting

  1. Whip the egg white until stiff.

  2. Gradually add the powdered sugar while beating hard.

  3. Flavor the frosting to your taste.

Color and spread

  1. For color, add a little juice for pink or mix grated rind and juice of orange or lemon, strain, and add to the icing.

  2. Spread smoothly over the cake using a broad-bladed knife dipped in cold water.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Vanilla + strawberrytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,385 recipes

    Shared aroma: p-vinylguaiacol (spicy, fruity).

  3. Vanilla + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,371 recipes

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

  4. Strawberry + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together726 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

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
Whipped into foam, it traps air and gives the frosting its light, fluffy structure.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves into the whipped egg white to make the frosting sweet and firm as it sets.

The step that matters

Whip the egg white until stiff. Egg white foam holds air only when it is beaten enough to form stiff peaks. Under-whipped whites make a runny frosting that will not hold its shape, while the sugar must be added gradually so the foam stays stable.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, vanilla, strawberry, orange):

  1. Blueberryfits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, vanilla, strawberry, orange. 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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