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Dessert

Chocolate Icing

A sweet icing made from boiled sugar, chocolate or cocoa, and optionally egg whites, used to coat cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chocolate and cocoa work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 165 recipes. Both carry 2-ethyl-3,6-dimethylpyrazine, which smells roasted, nutty. The science ↓

Chocolate Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the first icing

  1. Boil the sugar in the water.

  2. Add the grated chocolate or cocoa essence and mix well.

  3. Spread the icing over the cake immediately.

  4. Decorate the top with bonbons.

Make the second icing

  1. For the second icing, boil the sugar in a little water and add the cocoa.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff and mix them with the sugar and cocoa.

  3. Spread this mixture onto the cake using the back of a spoon.

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. Chocolate + cocoatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-ethyl-3,6-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Chocolate + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

  5. Sugar + cocoatop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together956 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Beaten until stiff, they give the second icing a light, airy, foamy texture.
Sugar
Dissolved in boiling water to make a syrup that sweetens and thickens the icing.
Grated chocolate or cocoa essence
Supplies the chocolate flavour and dark colour of the icing.

The step that matters

Spread the icing over the cake immediately. Once the boiled sugar mixture cools and begins to set, it becomes stiff and hard to spread evenly, so it should be applied while still warm and fluid.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, chocolate, 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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