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Dessert

Almond Icing

A butter and almond extract icing for cakes, made with butter, egg white, icing sugar, almonds, and optional milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Almond Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Beat the egg white until stiff.

  3. Add the almond extract and icing sugar gradually, stirring well.

  4. If the mixture is too stiff, add a little milk.

Finish the cake

  1. Cover the cake with the icing and sprinkle with the rolled almonds.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  3. Almond + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the icing a creamy, smooth body.
Egg white
Whipped to stiffness, it adds air and lightens the texture of the icing.
Icing sugar
Provides sweetness and thickens the icing as it dissolves into the butter.
Almond extract
Supplies the main almond aroma and flavour throughout the icing.
Almonds
Add crunchy texture and a nutty flavour as a topping.

The step that matters

Add the icing sugar gradually. Icing sugar clumps easily, and adding it slowly while stirring lets the lumps dissolve into the butter and egg white, giving a smooth icing. Adding it all at once can leave lumps and an uneven texture.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Cocoafits less well
  4. Walnutfits less well

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