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Dessert

Sugar Icing for Cakes

A light, frothy icing made from egg whites, powdered sugar, and lemon juice, spread over cakes and dried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Sugar Icing for Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quite cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the whites

  1. Break the eggs one by one and separate the yolks from the whites.

  2. Remove any specks from the egg whites with a small fork.

  3. Whisk the egg whites to a perfectly solid froth.

Make the icing

  1. Stir in the pounded sugar with a wooden spoon until well combined.

  2. Add the lemon juice and mix thoroughly.

Ice and dry

  1. Spread the icing over the cake.

  2. Dry the icing very gently in a cool oven or in front of a fire.

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 + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 whites
Whisked into a solid froth, they give the icing its airy structure and body.
Sugar
Dissolves into the froth to add sweetness and bulk, and sets into a crisp, glossy coat as it dries.
Lemon juice
Adds a touch of acidity that brightens the sweetness and helps keep the icing stable.

The step that matters

Whisking the egg whites to a solid froth. Egg whites must be whisked until they hold stiff peaks. If they are underwhipped, or any yolk or grease remains, the foam collapses and the icing will be thin and weak. Specks are removed first for the same reason.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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