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Dessert

Chocolate Icing

A glossy chocolate icing made from cocoa, powdered sugar, egg whites, and optional hot water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Chocolate Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. Place the cocoa in a basin and set it in boiling water until dissolved.

  2. Add powdered sugar to taste and mix well.

  3. Incorporate the whisked egg whites to give a glossy finish.

Spread and finish

  1. Spread the mixture evenly on the cake with a knife while it is still warm.

  2. If desired, add 1 tablespoon of hot water to keep the icing moist longer.

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 + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  2. Cocoa + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together956 recipes

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

  3. Cocoa + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together582 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cocoa
Supplies the chocolate flavour and colour, and melts into a smooth base when dissolved.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the icing and thickens it as it is mixed in.
Egg whites
Add gloss and a light body to the icing.

The step that matters

Spreading while still warm. As the icing cools, its sugar and cocoa fat set and it stiffens. Spreading it while still warm lets it form a smooth, even coat before it firms up, while cooling too far makes it hard to spread and can leave drag marks.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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