Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Icing for Cake

A chocolate icing for cake made with egg, sugar, chocolate, milk, vanilla, butter, and a sugar-water frosting with egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Chocolate Icing for Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chocolate icing

  1. In a saucepan, combine the egg, 1½ cups sugar, chocolate, milk, and vanilla.

  2. Add the walnut-sized butter and cook over low heat until the mixture thickens.

  3. Remove from heat and keep warm until ready to ice the cake.

Make the frosting

  1. For the frosting, combine 2 cups sugar, 1 cup water, and ½ teaspoon cream of tartar in a saucepan.

  2. Cook until the mixture forms a rope when drizzled.

  3. Once cool, fold in the beaten egg whites.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

Egg
Thickens the chocolate mixture as it cooks and adds richness to the icing.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the icing and helps give it a smooth, glossy texture.
Chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and body of the icing.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer texture in the icing.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in to lighten the frosting and give it volume.

The step that matters

Cooking the frosting syrup to a rope stage. Sugar syrup must reach the right concentration before the egg whites go in. If it is undercooked the frosting stays runny, and if overcooked it turns hard and grainy once cooled. Cream of tartar helps keep the syrup smooth and stable.

Swap the walnut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, chocolate, milk, vanilla, butter, cream. 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.

You might also like

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipesChocolate FudgeChocolate Fudge55 recipes