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Dessert

Ornamental Icing

A stiff icing made from icing sugar, egg whites, and acetic acid, used for decorative designs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Ornamental Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. Place the unbeaten egg whites in a large bowl.

  2. Sift in the icing sugar and beat vigorously with a wooden spoon.

  3. Add the acetic acid and continue to beat until the mixture is stiff enough to hold its shape.

  4. If necessary, add more icing sugar.

Decorate

  1. Press the icing through pastry tubes to create your desired design.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Provide the protein structure that traps air and holds the icing's shape when beaten.
Icing sugar
Adds sweetness and bulk, stiffening the whipped egg whites into a pipeable icing.
Acetic acid
Acidity stabilises the egg white foam, helping it hold its volume and stiffness.

The step that matters

Beating until stiff enough to hold its shape. Under-beaten icing stays too soft to hold a pattern, while over-beating can make it dry and crumbly. Adding icing sugar gradually lets you adjust the stiffness without overshooting.

“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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