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To Make Iceing for Cakes

A sweet icing made from refined sugar, egg whites, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 Iceing for Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. Take enough sifted double refined loaf sugar for the cake or cakes you want to ice.

  2. Place the sugar in an earthen pan.

  3. Add the whites of eggs until the mixture is soft.

  4. Beat the mixture well, adding a little lemon juice until you can just taste the acid.

Ice the cake

  1. Spread the icing on your cake with a knife using a small wooden spatula.

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 + lemontop 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. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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
Forms the sweet, bulk body of the icing that sets firm as it dries.
Whites of eggs
Whipped with the sugar to give the icing its soft structure and glossy finish.
Lemon juice
Adds a light acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar.

The step that matters

Beating the whites with the sugar. Beating must be thorough so the sugar dissolves and the egg whites hold air, giving a smooth, even icing. Under-beaten icing stays soft and can tear when spread. Add lemon juice gradually, since too much makes the icing sour.

Swap the lemon

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

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