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Dessert

Pink Icing

A stiff pink icing made from egg whites, corn starch, and pink sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Pink Icing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Break the whites of two eggs into a bowl without beating.

  2. Add one teaspoon of corn starch.

  3. Gradually mix in pink sugar until the mixture is stiff.

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. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

  3. Egg + corntop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Form the liquid base that the sugar stiffens into a spreadable icing.
Corn starch
Helps the icing hold its shape and stay smooth rather than grainy.
Pink sugar
Sweetens and thickens the whites, giving the icing its body and stiffness.

The step that matters

Gradually mix in pink sugar. Adding sugar a little at a time lets it dissolve and be absorbed evenly. Adding it all at once can leave lumps and uneven stiffness.

“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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