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Dessert

Chocolate Icing

A simple icing made with powdered sugar, cocoa, butter, and boiling coffee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cocoa powder and coffee work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 541 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Chocolate Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. In a bowl, mix the powdered sugar and cocoa powder.

  2. Add the butter and mix until combined.

  3. Pour in the boiling coffee and stir until smooth.

Finish

  1. Spread the icing on the cake without cooking it.

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. Cocoa powder + coffeetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together541 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Sugar + cocoa powdertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cocoa powder + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Powdered sugar
Provides sweetness and a smooth, fine body to the icing.
Cocoa powder
Gives the icing its chocolate flavour and dark colour.
Boiling coffee
Dissolves the sugar and cocoa, making the icing smooth and glossy while deepening the chocolate flavour.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a soft, spreadable texture.

The step that matters

Pour in the boiling coffee and stir until smooth. Hot liquid dissolves the sugar and melts the butter into the cocoa, so the icing sets smooth instead of grainy. Lumps left from cold mixing will not dissolve later.

“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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