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Dessert

Fudge Frosting

A chocolate frosting made with sugar, sweet milk, butter, chocolate, egg whites, walnuts, and coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 606 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Fudge Frosting

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fudge base

  1. Combine 2 cups sugar, 1 cup sweet milk, 1 walnut‑sized piece of butter, and 1 bar of Baker's chocolate in a saucepan.

  2. Cook the mixture over medium heat until it thickens.

Make the filling

  1. Boil 2 cups sugar and ¼ cup cold water until it reaches a soft ball stage for the filling.

  2. Beat the whites of 2 eggs until stiff, then gradually add the sugar syrup.

  3. Fold in 1 cup chopped walnut meat and 2 to 3 tablespoons shredded coconut.

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. Walnut + coconuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Chocolate + coconuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Walnut + chocolatetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped whites trap air, giving the filling a light, stiff structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the frosting and, when boiled, forms the syrup that sets the texture.
Baker's chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and body of the fudge base.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites with the sugar syrup. Syrup must be added gradually while whites are stiff; pouring it in too fast can deflate the foam and leave the filling loose rather than light and set.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Almondfits about as well
  3. Peanutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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