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Mock Caramel Icing

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Mock Caramel Icing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and allow it to brown.

  2. Remove from heat and let it cool slightly.

  3. Add nuts or fruits if desired.

  4. For a yellow icing, mix in egg yolks.

  5. Cover the container with a damp cloth and store for several days before using.

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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + nutstop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,291 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Nuts + eggtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,624 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Swap the nuts

The recipe marks nuts as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg):

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Filbertfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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