Name: Butter Icing
Ingredients: 1 cup powdered sugar; 2 tablespoons boiling water; 2 tablespoons melted butter

Why it works: Sugar and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Butter Icing

Ingredients

1 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons boiling water
2 tablespoons melted butter

Directions

Make the icing

In a bowl, combine powdered sugar and boiling water.
Add melted butter and mix until smooth.
Beat the mixture until well combined.

Finish

Spread the icing on your cake.

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.

Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Powdered sugar: Provides sweetness and bulk, forming the body of the icing.
Melted butter: Adds fat for smooth richness and a silky texture when cooled.
Boiling water: Dissolves the sugar and loosens the mixture into a spreadable icing.

“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.