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Boiled Frosting
Whites of three eggs beaten to a stiff froth, one large cup granulated sugar moistened with four table-spoons hot water; boil sugar briskly for five minutes or until it "jingles" on the bottom of the cup when dropped into cold water, or "ropes" or threads when dropped from the end of the spoon. Then, with left hand, pour the boiling syrup upon the beaten eggs in a small stream, while beating hard with right hand. This is an excellent frosting. If preferred, add half pound sweet almonds blanched and pounded to a paste, or a cup of hickory-nut meats, chopped fine, and it will be perfectly delicious. This amount will frost the top of two large cakes. Mrs. A. S. C.
This is an Italian meringue in all but name: hot sugar syrup beaten into stiff whites. The syrup temperature is the whole recipe, and a candy thermometer replaces the guesswork the original had to rely on.
- What "jingles" and "ropes" meanBoth are tests for the thread stage, roughly 230-235F. A drop into cold water sets into a soft thread that clicks faintly against the cup; lifted on a spoon it trails a fine thread. Five minutes of brisk boiling is a rough guide only — pan width and burner output change it — so go by the thermometer.
- Cook the syrup a little further if you canTaking it to 238-240F (soft ball) gives a firmer, more reliable frosting than a bare thread stage, and the hotter syrup does more to cook the whites, though beating hot syrup into whites is not a guaranteed pasteurisation. Below about 235F the meringue is softer and less reliable.
- A large cupRead it as a full 8 oz cup, about 200 g granulated sugar. With three whites (roughly 90-100 g) that gives a standard meringue ratio; there is no need to adjust it.
- Two hands, or a mixerThe left-hand/right-hand instruction describes what a stand mixer now does better. Pour the syrup down the side of the bowl in a thin stream with the machine running at medium, avoiding the moving whisk, then beat on high until the bowl is barely warm and the meringue holds a firm peak — six to ten minutes.
- The nut variationsHalf a pound of blanched almonds pounded to a paste is a substantial addition and turns this into a thick almond icing rather than a spreadable frosting; a cup of finely chopped hickory nuts (or pecans, which behave the same) folded in at the end is the lighter option. Fold nuts in after the meringue has cooled or the fat and moisture will slacken it.
- Timing and weatherBoiled frosting is at its best within an hour of making and does not like humid days, when it stays tacky and weeps. Spread it while still slightly warm and pliable; it crusts on the surface and stays marshmallowy underneath.
- YieldAs stated, enough to cover the tops of two large cakes — about 3 cups of finished frosting. For a filled and fully iced two-layer cake, make one and a half times the quantity.
Buckeye Cookery (1877; the book originated in Marysville, Ohio) belongs to the period when boiled icing was gaining ground alongside the older uncooked kind, in which whites were simply beaten with sifted loaf sugar and a little lemon and left to dry in a barely warm oven. Pouring boiling syrup into the whites gave a frosting that set glossy and stayed soft, and it needed no oven time at all — an advantage when the oven was a wood-fired range whose temperature was hard to hold low. The technique is now generally called Italian meringue, though nineteenth-century American books rarely used that name. The nut variations suit the book's region: hickory nuts were commonly gathered rather than bought in the Ohio Valley, and appear in community cookbooks of the period where a modern writer would specify pecans or walnuts. The recipe's attribution to "Mrs. A. S. C." is typical of the volume, which was compiled from recipes contributed by many housekeepers and credits them by initials.