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Dessert

Cocoa Icing

A sweet, nutty and raisin‑laden icing made from sugar, water, cocoa, vanilla, nuts and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and nuts work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 638 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Cocoa Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. In a saucepan, combine 1 cup sugar and ⅓ cup boiling water.

  2. Stir until the sugar is dissolved.

  3. Boil the mixture until it spins a thread when dropped from a spoon.

  4. Remove from heat and let it cool slightly.

Finish the icing

  1. Add 1 teaspoon vanilla extract and 2 tablespoons cocoa powder.

  2. Stir in 1 cup chopped nuts and 1 cup raisins until the icing is stiff enough to spread.

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. Vanilla + nutstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together638 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

  3. Vanilla + cocoa powdertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Nuts + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Vanilla + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together782 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

Sugar
Dissolves into the boiled syrup and sets firm as the icing cools, giving it body and sweetness.
Cocoa powder
Adds chocolate flavour and colour to the icing.
Chopped nuts
Add crunch and texture to the stiffened icing.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness to the icing.

The step that matters

Boil until it spins a thread. Boiling concentrates the sugar syrup so it will set firm when cooled. Stop too early and the icing stays runny; boil too long and it becomes hard and grainy.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, vanilla, cocoa powder, nuts):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vanilla, cocoa powder, nuts. 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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