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Dessert

Butter Icing

A butter-based icing made with butter, icing sugar, and coffee essence or other flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and coffee are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,344 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Butter Icing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Sift the icing sugar through a fine sieve.

  2. Cream the butter in a bowl, gradually adding the icing sugar with a wooden spoon until well mixed and creamy.

  3. Add the coffee essence or other flavoring gradually while continuing to cream.

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 + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

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

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + coffeetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,442 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Provides fat and richness, and creaming it traps air for a light, smooth texture.
Icing sugar
Sweetens the icing and dissolves into the butter to give it body and a smooth consistency.
Coffee essence
Adds the main flavor of the icing, dispersed evenly through the creamed mixture.

The step that matters

Adding the flavoring gradually. Liquid added all at once can make the creamed butter and sugar split or loosen. Adding it slowly while creaming lets it blend evenly and keeps the icing smooth.

“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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