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Dessert

Vienna Chocolate Icing

A chocolate icing made with icing sugar, butter, powdered chocolate, coffee brown, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Chocolate and coffee are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,497 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells buttery, creamy. The science ↓

Vienna Chocolate Icing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the icing sugar, butter, powdered chocolate, coffee brown, and brandy.

  2. Mix with a wooden spoon for about 15 minutes until creamy.

  3. Use immediately or store as needed.

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. Chocolate + coffeetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

  2. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Chocolate + brandytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together287 recipes

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

  4. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Butter + chocolatetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,543 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Icing sugar
Sweetens the icing and gives it a soft, fine body as it is beaten.
Fresh butter
Provides fat that makes the icing rich and creamy when beaten.
Powdered chocolate
Supplies the chocolate flavour and adds solids that give the icing body.
Brandy or liquor
Adds liquid to loosen the mixture and contributes aroma.

The step that matters

Mix with a wooden spoon for about 15 minutes until creamy. Beating incorporates air and fully blends the fat with the sugar and chocolate. Stopping early can leave a grainy or dense icing, while the butter needs to be soft enough to cream smoothly.

“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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