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Caramel Frosting with Nuts
1¼ cups soft brown sugar. 1/4 cup granulated sugar. 1/2 cup boiling water.
Whites 2 eggs. 1/2 teaspoon almond extract. 1/2 cup pecan nut meats broken in pieces.
PROCESS: Boil sugar and water together as for Boiled Frosting (see recipe Page 56). Pour slowly onto beaten whites of eggs, beating constantly, continue beating until frosting is nearly cool. Put pan containing frosting in a larger vessel of boiling water, place on range and cook until mixture granulates around sides of pan, stir constantly while cooking. Remove from hot water and beat until frosting will keep its shape when dropped from spoon. Add nut meats and flavoring. Spread on cake, using wooden spoon to give surface a wave-like appearance.
A boiled-syrup meringue frosting, deliberately taken past the smooth stage until it begins to grain at the edge of the pan — that is what gives it the thick, fudgy body it needs to hold the wave pattern.
- Brown sugar quantityThe printed page was checked: the frosting takes 1¼ cups soft brown sugar with ¼ cup granulated sugar and ½ cup boiling water. That puts the sugar-to-water ratio in the right range for a soft-ball syrup.
- Cook the syrup to soft ballThe original gives no temperature, referring only to the Boiled Frosting recipe on page 56. Boiled frostings of the period were generally taken to about the soft-ball stage, roughly 238-240F on a modern thermometer. Brown sugar syrups look darker than they are, so judge by the thermometer rather than by colour.
- Pour in a thin streamAdd the hot syrup down the side of the bowl in a slow thread onto whites already beaten to firm peaks. Dumped in at once it cooks the whites into threads that will not smooth out later.
- The granulating step is the pointSetting the pan over boiling water and stirring until the mixture grains around the sides drives off moisture and starts crystallisation. This is what turns a glossy meringue into an opaque, spreadable caramel icing. Stop as soon as you see grain at the edges; go further and it sets hard in the pan.
- Soft brown sugarPeriod "soft" brown sugar is close to today's light brown. Dark brown will work and gives a stronger molasses note, but it browns the frosting considerably.
- Almond extract with pecansHalf a teaspoon in this quantity is assertive by modern taste, and almond tends to swamp pecan. A quarter teaspoon, or vanilla, suits most palates now. Add it off the heat, as the original does, so it does not flash off.
- Toast the nutsNot in the original, but eight minutes at 350F before breaking them up makes a marked difference against the sweetness of the frosting.
- Work fast at the endOnce it holds its shape from the spoon it will continue to stiffen. Spread immediately; the wave-like surface is made by pressing the back of the spoon down and lifting, not by smoothing.
- YieldEnough to fill and cover a two-layer 8- or 9-inch cake, or generously top a single 9-inch layer.
Boiled frostings of this type were a mainstay of American cake decorating from the late nineteenth century until buttercreams became common; they needed no refrigeration and no butter -- hot sugar syrup and egg whites were within reach of any kitchen with a range and a strong arm. The extra step here, cooking the finished meringue over water until it grains, works on the same principle as fudge: encouraging controlled crystallisation to get opacity and body rather than gloss, which makes it a cousin of the penuche and maple-sugar candies popular at the time. 52 Sunday Dinners is generally credited to Elizabeth O. Hiller and was issued around 1913 by the N. K. Fairbank Company, which made the shortening Cottolene; like many manufacturer-sponsored cookbooks of the era it organised itself as a full year of menus, so that a hostess could cook straight through the calendar without planning.