Name: Yellow Icing
Ingredients: 1 egg yolk; 9 heaping teaspoons powdered sugar; vanilla or lemon extract (to taste)

Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Yellow Icing

Ingredients

1 egg yolk
9 heaping teaspoons powdered sugar
vanilla or lemon extract (to taste)

Directions

In a bowl, combine the egg yolk and powdered sugar and mix until smooth and creamy.
Add vanilla or lemon extract to taste and mix well.

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.

Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together35,032 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together27,347 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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 yolk: Provides richness and binds the sugar into a smooth, creamy icing.
Powdered sugar: Supplies sweetness and body, thickening the icing as it dissolves into the yolk.

“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.