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Dessert

Almond Icing

A sweet and bitter almond icing for cakes, made with icing sugar, lemon juice, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,655 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Almond Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. Blanch and pound the sweet and bitter almonds in a mortar, moistening with egg white to prevent oiling.

  2. Work in the icing sugar and lemon juice, mixing until smooth.

Ice and set the cake

  1. Spread the icing thickly over the cake with a knife.

  2. Set the cake in the oven to set the almond icing.

Finish and decorate

  1. Once cold, cover with royal icing and decorate with candied fruits.

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. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. 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

Sweet almonds
Form the main body and nutty flavour of the icing paste.
Bitter almonds
Add a deeper, slightly bitter almond aroma that balances the sweetness.
Icing sugar
Sweetens the paste and stiffens it so it can be spread thickly.
Egg whites
Bind the pounded almonds into a smooth paste and help keep it from separating into oil.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the almond and sugar.

The step that matters

Moistening the almonds with egg white while pounding. Almonds release their oil when crushed. Adding a little egg white keeps the paste emulsified and smooth, so it does not turn greasy or separate, which would make the icing hard to spread and set.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Pistachiofits about as well
  2. Milletfits about as well
  3. Almondthe original
  4. Chickpeafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, 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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