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Dessert

Butter Icing

A sweet glaze made from butter, milk or other liquid, icing sugar, and flavorings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Butter Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. In a bowl, combine the milk, cream, fruit juice, or strong coffee with the butter.

  2. Gradually add the icing sugar until you reach the desired consistency.

  3. Add flavoring to taste.

Variations

  1. For variations, mix in 1½ tablespoons cocoa using milk or cream as the liquid.

  2. Alternatively, melt ½ square of chocolate over hot water and add hot milk or water.

  3. You can also add crushed fruits like strawberries, cherries, or grated pineapple with the fruit juice and flavor with lemon juice.

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

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

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the icing a smooth, creamy texture.
Icing sugar
Provides sweetness and bulk, and sets the icing's thickness as it is added.
Milk, cream, fruit juice, or strong coffee
Liquid that loosens the butter and sugar into a spreadable consistency.

The step that matters

Gradually add the icing sugar. Adding all the sugar at once can make the icing stiff and grainy, while adding it slowly lets you control the consistency and keep it smooth.

“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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