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Dessert

Fondant Icing

Fondant icing is a glaze made from fondant, egg white, fruit sugar, water, flavoring, and coloring, used to coat cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Fondant Icing

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cake

  1. Bake the cake mixture in individual or large shallow pans.

  2. Cool the cake.

  3. Cut the cake into desired shapes.

  4. Beat the egg white slightly and add the fruit sugar.

  5. Brush the cut edges of the cake with this mixture.

  6. Let it stand for several hours or overnight.

Ice and decorate

  1. Melt the plain fondant over hot water, stirring continuously.

  2. Thin with hot water if necessary.

  3. Add flavoring and coloring.

  4. Lower each cake into the fondant using a fork, coating the top and sides.

  5. Lift out and place on a board or cake cooler.

  6. Decorate with nuts and candied fruit.

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

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

  2. Sugar + nutstop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,228 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Egg + nutstop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,624 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Plain fondant
Forms the smooth, glossy coating that covers the cake's top and sides.
Egg white
Binds with the fruit sugar to form a sealing layer on the cut edges of the cake.
Fruit sugar
Sweetens the egg white mixture used to seal the cut cake edges.

The step that matters

Melting the fondant over hot water. Fondant that is too hot or too thin runs off the cake, while fondant that is too cool or thick clumps and coats unevenly. Stirring continuously keeps it smooth and evenly heated, and thinning with hot water only as needed gives an even, pourable coating.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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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