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Dessert

Raisin and Nut Icing

A sweet icing made from sugar syrup, egg white, raisins, and walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Raisin and Nut Icing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the sugar, cream of tartar, and boiling water without stirring until it forms a thread when dripped from a spoon.

  2. Pour the syrup over the stiffly beaten egg white.

  3. Add the chopped walnuts and raisins.

  4. Beat the mixture until it cools.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Walnut + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Cream + walnuttop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Granulated sugar
Dissolves into a syrup that sweetens the icing and gives it body as it cools.
Egg white
Beaten into a foam that the hot syrup sets into a light, airy icing.
Cream of tartar
Mild acid that helps the beaten egg white hold its foam and stay stable.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty flavour against the soft icing.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture to the icing.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup to a thread without stirring. The syrup's sugar concentration sets how firm the icing becomes, so it must reach the thread stage. Stirring can trigger sugar crystals, which would make the icing grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Walnutthe original

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

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