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Dessert

Gold Nut Icing

A nutty icing made with sugar syrup, egg, vanilla, and blanched almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Gold Nut Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil sugar and water together until it spins a long hair when syrup is dipped from the saucepan and dropped back into the pan, about 2-3 minutes.

Make the icing

  1. Beat the white and yolk of the egg together.

  2. Pour the boiling syrup very slowly into the egg while whipping briskly with a wire egg beater.

  3. Do not scrape syrup from the pan; use only the syrup that comes by pouring.

  4. Beat the mixture until it shows signs of becoming hard, then add vanilla and chopped nuts.

  5. Spread on cake.

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. Vanilla + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Vanilla + eggtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

Sugar
Dissolves into the syrup and sets into the icing's sweet, firm structure as it cools.
Egg
Its proteins whipped with hot syrup create the light, glossy body of the icing.
Blanched chopped almonds
Add crunch and nutty flavor to the soft icing.

The step that matters

Pouring the syrup into the egg. Pour the boiling syrup very slowly while whipping briskly. Pouring too fast can cook the egg in lumps instead of blending it smoothly, and the syrup must be hot enough to set the egg while it is beaten.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Hazelnutfits less well
  4. Macadamia nutfits less well

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