For Frosting
1 cupful sugar 1 cupful water 2 whites of eggs Pinch cream of tartar 1 teaspoonful lemon juice 1 teaspoonful vanilla extract For cakes. Cream Crisco and sugar thoroughly together, add eggs well beaten, salt, vanilla, milk or water, baking powder, flour, and nuts. Mix well and divide into Criscoed and floured gem pans and bake ten minutes in moderate oven. When cold cover with boiled frosting.
For frosting. Dissolve sugar and water over fire in a saucepan, add cream of tartar and boil until it forms a soft ball when tried in cold water. or 240 degree F. Pour on to the beaten whites of eggs, pouring in a steady stream and very slowly, adding, while beating, lemon juice, and vanilla; beat until thick, and use.
Sufficient for fifteen cakes.
This is a boiled frosting — what a modern kitchen would call Italian meringue — printed with the tail end of the cake recipe it belonged to. Read the ingredient list as belonging to the frosting only.
- The cake instructions are orphanedThe paragraph beginning "Cream Crisco and sugar" refers to a small nut cake whose quantities are not given on this page. The six ingredients listed are the frosting; use your own cake or cupcake recipe under it.
- The hinge: syrup temperature240F (soft-ball) is the whole recipe, as the text itself notes. Undercooked syrup tends to leave the frosting soft and weeping; overcooked syrup tends to set hard and grainy on the beater. Use a thermometer and stop the cooking when it reads 240F.
- Do not stir the syrupDissolve the sugar in the water over low heat, then leave it alone once it boils. The cream of tartar inverts some of the sucrose, which discourages crystallising, but stirring a boiling syrup can seed crystals anyway.
- Pour slowly, and down the sideWith the mixer running, add the syrup in a thin steady stream against the inside of the bowl rather than onto the whisk, which flings hot sugar into threads. Beat until the bowl is barely warm — six to ten minutes in a stand mixer.
- "Moderate oven"For the cakes referred to, moderate means 350F. Ten minutes suits gem pans, which are small individual tins roughly the size of a modern muffin cup.
- CriscoThe book is a Crisco promotion; the shortening is period-authentic but interchangeable with any solid vegetable shortening. Butter gives better flavour at some cost in tenderness.
- Yield and keepingEnough for fifteen small cakes, as stated. Use it within an hour or two of making; boiled frosting crusts on the surface and does not respond well to re-beating.
This is the frosting that dominated American cake baking from the late nineteenth century through the 1930s, appearing under the names boiled frosting, boiled icing and white mountain frosting depending on the book; seven-minute frosting is a closely related but differently made cousin, cooked over hot water rather than poured as a syrup. A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble to promote Crisco, launched in 1911, which accounts for the shortening in the cake and the verb "Criscoed" applied to the pans.