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Dessert

Yellow Icing for Cake

A yellow icing made from egg whites, yolks, powdered sugar, butter, and vanilla or orange extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla 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 ↓

Yellow Icing for Cake

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the egg white until stiff.

  2. Add the egg yolk and beat again.

  3. Mix in the powdered sugar, butter, and vanilla or orange extract until smooth.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Walnut + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,730 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Sugar and vanilla 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 white
Whipped into a stiff foam that gives the icing its light, airy structure.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and fat, softening the texture and lending a yellow colour.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves into the mixture to provide sweetness and body for a smooth icing.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the icing creamier and smoother to spread.

The step that matters

Beat the egg white until stiff. Egg white only holds air when whipped to stiff peaks, and any trace of fat or yolk in the bowl will prevent it from foaming properly. Properly whipped white gives the icing its lightness, so under-beating leaves a dense, flat result.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

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