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Dessert

Ice Cream Icing for White Cake

A sweet icing made from powdered sugar, vanilla, citric acid, and beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Ice Cream Icing for White Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil 2 cups of powdered sugar with enough water to make a thick syrup.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in 3 teaspoons of vanilla extract.

  3. Once cooled, fold in the beaten egg whites and 2 teaspoons of citric acid.

Make the icing

  1. In a separate bowl, combine 1 pound of powdered sugar with 1 tablespoon of cold water.

  2. Gently beat 3 egg whites until slightly frothy and add to the sugar mixture.

  3. Place the bowl in a vessel of boiling water and heat until the mixture becomes thin and clear.

  4. Continue heating until it thickens, then remove from heat and stir until cool and spreadable.

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. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Vanilla + eggtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

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

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

Powdered sugar
Provides the bulk and sweetness, and dissolves into a syrup that sets as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped to a foam that gives the icing lightness and a soft, airy structure.
Citric acid
Adds tartness and helps keep the egg white foam stable.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites only after the syrup has cooled. Hot syrup would cook the egg whites before they can be folded in, causing lumps and losing the foam that gives the icing its lightness.

“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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