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Dessert

Frosting or Icing

A simple cake frosting made from cold egg white and powdered sugar, optionally flavored and colored.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Frosting or Icing

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the frosting

  1. Ensure the egg white and plate are cold.

  2. Add a small handful of powdered sugar to the egg white as you begin to beat it.

  3. Continue adding the sugar at intervals until fully incorporated.

  4. If the frosting is too thin, beat in more powdered sugar.

  5. If the frosting becomes too stiff, thin it with a little water.

  6. For a whiter, frothier frosting, add lemon juice or tartaric acid while beating.

Apply and decorate

  1. Spread the frosting evenly over the cake with a broad knife.

  2. Apply a second coat after the first has dried slightly.

  3. To decorate, reserve some frosting and use a clean glass syringe to apply designs.

  4. Color reserved frosting with desired natural colorings.

  5. Dry the cake in a cool oven with the door open or in a drafty window.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Vanilla + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Vanilla + chocolatetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

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

  5. Vanilla + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,371 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg white
Whips into a foam that gives the frosting its light, airy structure.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves into the foam to sweeten and stiffen the frosting as it sets.
Lemon juice or tartaric acid
Acid helps the egg white foam stay stable, giving a whiter, frothier frosting.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar gradually. Egg white foam collapses if sugar is added too fast or in large amounts. Adding it in small portions at intervals lets the proteins trap air and build a stable, stiff foam.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, vanilla, almond, rose, chocolate, orange):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, vanilla, almond, rose, chocolate, orange. 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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