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Dessert

Mrs. Wilson's Decokative and Plain Icing

An icing made from egg whites, sugar, lemon juice, and a syrup, suitable for decoration or plain use.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Mrs. Wilson's Decokative and Plain Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Cook the syrup until it drops thick from a spoon.

Beat the icing

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff and smooth, adding ½ cup of sugar.

  2. Add the syrup to the egg whites a little at a time, letting the last cook until it threads.

  3. Beat well, then place over a pan of hot water and add the baking powder.

  4. Cook until it piles without sinking to decorate.

  5. For plain icing, less cooking is required.

  6. The decorative icing can be beaten back smooth with a spoon.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that gives the icing its structure and body.
Sugar
Sweetens the icing and, cooked into syrup, sets it firm as it cools.

The step that matters

Cooking the syrup to the right stage. Sugar syrup must reach the correct thickness before it meets the egg whites. Under-cooked syrup makes the icing runny, while over-cooked syrup makes it hard and brittle once set.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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