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Dessert

Butter Icing for Cake

A butter-based icing made with icing sugar, butter, and vanilla essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Butter Icing for Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sift the icing sugar through a fine sieve.

  2. Cream the butter until smooth.

Make the icing

  1. Gradually add the icing sugar, beating thoroughly after each addition.

  2. Flavor with vanilla essence.

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

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

  2. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Icing sugar
Provides sweetness and bulk, dissolving into the butter to form the body of the icing.
Butter
Provides fat and richness, and its creaming gives the icing a smooth, spreadable texture.

The step that matters

Gradually add the icing sugar, beating thoroughly after each addition. Adding sugar in small portions lets each addition blend fully into the butter. Dumping it in at once can leave gritty lumps and an uneven, stiff texture.

“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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