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Milk Frosting
1½ cups granulated sugar. 1/2 cup rich milk. 1 teaspoon butter. 1/4 teaspoon each vanilla and lemon extract.
PROCESS: Melt butter in sauce-pan; add sugar and milk. Stir constantly that sugar may not stick to saucepan, bring to boiling point and cook without stirring twelve to fourteen minutes. Remove from range and beat until of the consistency to spread; add flavoring and pour over cake, spread evenly with spatula. When frosting is firm, crease at once with the dull edge of a silver knife. When eggs are high in price, this frosting will prove very acceptable. Supplementary Recipes
This is a boiled sugar frosting — essentially a thin fudge — and its success hinges on a candy thermometer rather than the clock. Twelve to fourteen minutes on an unspecified stove is a guess; 238°F is not.
- The hinge: cook to soft-ballThe hinge: cook to soft-ball stage, roughly 234-240F. Undercooked, the frosting stays sticky and may not set at all; taken much higher, it will stiffen in the pan before you can spread it. The twelve-to-fourteen minutes assumes a particular stove and pan, so a thermometer is the more reliable guide.
- "Rich milk"Means whole milk or milk with a little cream added. Whole milk works; half-and-half gives a smoother, softer set. Skim milk is a poor substitute here — the fat is what keeps the crystals fine.
- Stir, then stopThe instruction to stir only until the sugar dissolves and then leave it alone is deliberate. Agitating a boiling sugar syrup seeds large crystals and makes the frosting grainy. Wash any stray crystals down the pan sides with a wet brush instead.
- "Remove from range"The range is the stove. Standard fudge practice is to let the syrup cool undisturbed before beating, since beating while very hot coarsens the grain; note, though, that the recipe as written has you beat as soon as it comes off the heat.
- Beat until it loses its glossThat is the real signal for "consistency to spread": the mixture turns from glassy to matte and thickens noticeably. It sets fast from that point, so have the cake ready and pour without delay.
- CreasingScoring the surface into serving portions while the frosting is still soft lets you cut the cake later without shattering the top. The silver knife is period habit — any thin, unserrated blade does it.
- YieldRoughly 1½ cups, enough to cover the top of a single cake or a modest sheet. The recipe says only "pour over cake" and does not mention filling layers.
- Flavoring lastVanilla and lemon extract go in after the syrup comes off the heat, as written. Added earlier the alcohol simply boils off and takes the aroma with it.
The closing line explains the recipe's existence: "When eggs are high in price, this frosting will prove very acceptable." Boiled and uncooked icings built on beaten egg white were common American cake coverings of the period, and eggs were a fluctuating seasonal expense — dearer in winter, cheaper in spring when hens came back into lay. A milk-and-sugar frosting cooked to soft ball gave a sliceable finish out of pantry staples. The technique is essentially fudge-making applied to a cake top.