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Dessert

Filling and Frosting

A chocolate and vanilla filling and frosting for cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Chocolate and vanilla 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 ↓

Filling and Frosting

Oven, in the book's wordsA steady oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Boil sugar and water in a saucepan until it blisters.

  2. Stir in beaten egg whites, grated chocolate, and vanilla.

Fill and frost

  1. Use the mixture to fill layers and frost the top and sides of the 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.

  1. Chocolate + vanillatop 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 a syrup that sets as the filling cools, adding sweetness and body.
Egg whites
Beaten whites add air and structure, giving the filling a light, spreadable texture.
Unsweetened grated chocolate
Adds deep chocolate flavour and colour, and firms slightly as it cools.
Vanilla
Adds aroma that rounds out the sweetness and chocolate flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the sugar and water until it blisters. The sugar syrup's concentration controls how the mixture sets. Cooking too little leaves a runny filling that will not hold, while cooking too long makes it stiff and grainy once cooled.

“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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