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Dessert

Icing for Cakes

A light, spreadable icing made from beaten egg whites and powdered sugar, flavored with vanilla or lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Icing for Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Add vanilla or lemon extract to taste.

  3. Gradually stir in pulverized sugar until it reaches a spreadable consistency.

  4. Pour cold water over 1 pound of pulverized sugar to dissolve it.

  5. Beat 4 egg whites until very stiff.

  6. Gradually add the dissolved sugar.

  7. Place the bowl in a pan of ice water.

  8. Stir until thickened.

  9. Add lemon juice.

Spread the icing

  1. Dip the knife in cold water before spreading the icing.

  2. Spread the icing on the warm cake.

  3. Dip the knife in ice water to prevent sticking.

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. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Vanilla + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Vanilla and sugar 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

Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they give the icing its light, airy structure and body.
Pulverized sugar
Sweetens the icing and, once dissolved and stirred in, thickens it to a spreadable consistency.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the flavor of the icing.

The step that matters

Place the bowl in a pan of ice water while stirring. Cooling the icing as it is stirred keeps it from becoming too soft or runny, so it thickens into a spreadable consistency rather than loosening.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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