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Dessert

Ornamental Frosting

A light, stiff frosting made from egg whites, icing sugar, and lemon juice or acetic acid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Ornamental Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Put the unbeaten egg whites into a large bowl.

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

  3. Add lemon juice or acetic acid and beat until stiff.

  4. Test by cutting through the icing with a knife; if it holds its shape, it's ready.

  5. Add more sugar if needed.

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 + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 whites
Whipped into a foam that traps air and gives the frosting its structure and stiffness.
Icing sugar
Sweetens the frosting and, as it is beaten in, stiffens the foam so it holds its shape.
Lemon juice
Acid that helps stabilise the whipped egg white foam and keeps it from collapsing.

The step that matters

Beating until stiff. Egg whites must be beaten until the foam holds firm peaks before more sugar is added. Under-beaten icing stays soft and slumps, while over-beating can make it dry and brittle. The knife test shows when the structure is set.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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.

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