Skip to main content
Dessert

Frosting with Confectioners' Sugar

A simple frosting made with confectioners' sugar, water or milk, and optional chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,404 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Frosting with Confectioners' Sugar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the frosting

  1. Mix 4 tablespoons of confectioners' sugar with 1 tablespoon of water or milk until smooth.

  2. If the frosting is too thin, add more confectioners' sugar until thick.

Add chocolate

  1. Melt ½ square of chocolate over steam.

  2. Stir the melted chocolate into the plain frosting until well combined.

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 + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Confectioners' sugar
Dissolves into the liquid and stiffens it, giving the frosting body and sweetness.
Water or milk
Liquid that dissolves the sugar into a smooth, spreadable frosting.
Chocolate
Adds chocolate flavor and color to the frosting.

The step that matters

Adding more sugar when the frosting is too thin. Sugar dissolves into the liquid and thickens the mixture, so adding it gradually lets you stop at a spreadable texture. Adding too much liquid or too much sugar at once makes the frosting hard to correct.

“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.

You might also like

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipesChocolate FudgeChocolate Fudge55 recipesChocolate Drop CookiesChocolate Drop Cookies50 recipes