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Dessert

French Icing

A simple icing made from icing sugar, water, lemon juice, and optional chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,404 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

French Icing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine icing sugar, cold water, and lemon juice in a saucepan.

  2. Heat over low heat, stirring until the mixture reaches a cream‑like consistency.

  3. For chocolate icing, stir in grated chocolate until well combined.

  4. If the icing is too thick, add a little more water.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + chocolatetop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,096 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

Icing sugar
Provides sweetness and the bulk of the icing's body as it dissolves.
Cold water
Dissolves the sugar and sets the icing's consistency, thinning it when needed.
Grated chocolate
Adds flavour and colour when stirred in for the chocolate version.

The step that matters

Heat over low heat, stirring until cream-like. Gentle heat dissolves the sugar smoothly without scorching it or making the icing grainy. Overheating can cause it to thicken or set too firmly once cooled.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, chocolate. 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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