Why it works: Sugar and lemon 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 ↓
To Make Icing for Cakes
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the icing
Take enough sifted sugar to cover your cake.
In an earthen pan, add egg whites until the mixture is soft.
Beat well, adding a little lemon juice until you can just taste the acid.
Finish the cake
Spread the icing on your cake with a knife.
Use a small wooden spatula to beat the icing.
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.
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together44,316 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar and lemon 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
- Double refined loaf sugar
- Adds sweetness and body, giving the icing its thick, smooth texture.
- Whites of eggs
- Beaten into a foam that traps air and sets into the icing's structure.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that helps stabilize the beaten whites and brightens the flavor.
The step that matters
Adding the lemon juice. Add lemon juice a little at a time and stop once its acid is just tasteable. Acid helps stabilize beaten egg whites, but too much can thin the foam so the icing will not hold its shape.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
- Datesfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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