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Dessert

Chocolate and White Icing

A sweet icing made from sugar syrup, egg whites, vanilla, and chocolate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,020 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Chocolate and White Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and water in a glassware saucepan.

  2. Boil gently for about 5 minutes until bubbles form at the bottom.

  3. Remove from heat immediately.

  4. Do not stir or shake the sugar while cooking.

Make the icing

  1. Pour the hot syrup in a thin stream into the beaten egg whites, beating continuously.

  2. Continue to beat until the icing thickens.

  3. Flavor with vanilla.

  4. Use two-thirds of the icing as white icing.

Make the chocolate icing

  1. For the remaining one-third, add melted chocolate.

  2. Melt the chocolate by shaving it finely and placing it in a cup over a pan of boiling water.

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. Vanilla + chocolatetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  3. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Egg + vanillatop 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

Sugar
Dissolves into syrup that cooks into a sweet, stable base for the icing.
Egg whites
Whipped to foam, they trap air and set with the hot syrup to form the icing's structure.
Chocolate
Adds bitter flavor and color to the portion of icing it is folded into.

The step that matters

Pour the hot syrup in a thin stream while beating. Pouring slowly while beating lets the hot syrup cook the egg whites gradually and evenly. Dumping it in at once can scramble the whites or leave the icing lumpy and unstable.

“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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