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Dessert

Chocolate Icing

A sweet icing made from sugar, chocolate, water, egg whites, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Chocolate and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,020 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Chocolate Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. Boil water and sugar until it reaches a hair stage.

  2. Add melted chocolate and stir until smooth.

  3. Pour the mixture in a fine stream over the beaten egg whites.

  4. Add vanilla and beat until cold.

Finish

  1. Spread on cake.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. 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

Sugar
Sweetens the icing and, cooked to a syrup, sets the structure of the frosting.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the icing its light, airy texture.
Chocolate
Adds the chocolate flavor, color, and some richness to the icing.
Vanilla
Adds a warm aroma that rounds out the chocolate flavor.

The step that matters

Pour the syrup in a fine stream over the egg whites. The hot syrup cooks the egg white proteins and stabilizes the foam. Pouring slowly in a thin stream distributes the heat evenly and keeps the whites from deflating or forming cooked lumps.

“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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