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Dessert

Frosting for the Above

A frosting made with egg whites, sugar, chocolate, and coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Chocolate and coconut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,107 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Frosting for the Above

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the whites of 1 egg until frothy.

  2. Melt the Baker's chocolate and mix it with the sugar.

  3. Add the soaked coconut to the mixture and stir 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. Chocolate + coconuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,107 recipes

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

  2. Coconut + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Chocolate + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

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

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Beating them incorporates air, giving the frosting a light, foamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the frosting and adds bulk to the mixture.
Baker's chocolate
Provides rich chocolate flavor and fat that sets the frosting's body.
Coconut
Adds texture and sweet coconut flavor, with moisture from the milk soak.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Raspberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, chocolate, milk. 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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