Skip to main content
Dessert

White Icing

A simple icing made by boiling sugar and milk, then beating until white and adding vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

White Icing

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. Boil sugar and milk for about 7 minutes.

  2. Let it cool nearly, then beat until white.

  3. Add vanilla and mix well.

Finish

  1. Optionally, fold in nuts, dates, or raisins.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Vanilla + datestop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Vanilla + nutstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together638 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Nuts + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Provides sweetness and, once boiled and beaten, forms the body of the icing.
Milk
Dissolves the sugar and adds moisture so the boiled mixture can be beaten into icing.

The step that matters

Beating after cooling. If the mixture is beaten while still very hot, it stays runny and will not turn white and thick. Letting it cool nearly to lukewarm lets the sugar recrystallize into a fine, opaque, spreadable texture as it is beaten.

Swap the nuts

The recipe marks nuts as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, milk, vanilla, dates, raisin):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pecansfits about as well
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, vanilla, dates, raisin. 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.

More white icing recipes

Egg 17Boiled 3 See all 23 →

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesStuffed DatesStuffed Dates32 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes