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Dessert

Frosting or Icing

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Prepare

  1. Ensure the egg white and plate are cold.

  2. Use ½ cup powdered sugar for one egg white.

Make the frosting

  1. Add a small handful of sugar to the egg white as you begin beating.

  2. Continue adding sugar at intervals until fully incorporated for a smooth frosting.

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

  4. If the icing becomes too stiff, thin it with a little water until smooth.

  5. 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 two coats of frosting, allowing the first to dry before adding the second.

  3. Reserve some icing and use a clean glass syringe to create desired shapes after the first coat dries.

  4. Color reserved icing with various agents as desired.

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

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
Sweetens the frosting and, as it dissolves, thickens it into a smooth, spreadable body.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar gradually while beating. Sugar added in small amounts at intervals lets the egg white foam stay stable and dissolve fully. Adding it all at once can deflate the foam and leave a grainy, uneven frosting.

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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