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Frosting with Gelatine
Dissolve large pinch gelatine in six table-spoons boiling water; strain and thicken with sugar and flavor with lemon. This is enough to frost two cakes. - Mrs. W. A. J.
A gelatine icing of the kind used when eggs were scarce or a cook wanted a glaze that would set firm without boiling sugar to a thread. The original assumes you know how thick "thick" should be, so the sugar quantity is left to judgment.
- The hinge: work while it is warmGelatine begins to set as it cools, and once it does the icing turns to a stiff, unspreadable curd that cannot be smoothed. Beat in the sugar and get it onto the cake immediately, keeping the bowl over warm water if it stiffens.
- "Large pinch" of gelatineGenuinely ambiguous. Read it as roughly half a teaspoon of modern powdered gelatine, or about half a sheet of leaf gelatine, for the six tablespoons of water. More than that gives a rubbery, chewy glaze rather than a soft one.
- Gelatine then and nowIn the 1870s gelatine commonly came as shreds, sheets or isinglass, forms that needed real dissolving and straining, which may be why the recipe calls for boiling water and a strainer. Modern powdered gelatine should be softened in a spoonful of cold water first, then dissolved in the hot; strain anyway to catch lumps.
- How much sugarSix tablespoons of liquid is three fluid ounces, about three-eighths of a cup, and it will take roughly three to four cups of sifted confectioners' sugar to reach a spreadable frosting. Add it gradually and stop when the icing holds a ribbon.
- The sugar itselfPulverized sugar, the finely crushed loaf sugar of the period, is the likely intention, though the recipe says only 'sugar'. Modern confectioners' sugar is the right substitute; it carries a little cornstarch, which is unlikely to hurt this icing.
- Flavoring with lemonA teaspoon of lemon extract, or the juice and grated zest of half a lemon, is in keeping. Juice adds liquid, so hold back a little of the water if you use it.
- YieldAs stated, enough to frost two cakes.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping (1877) gathered its recipes from Ohio housewives and printed them under initials, as here, which is why the instructions read like one cook talking to another rather than a formal method. Frostings in that era are often described as falling into two broad camps: boiled icings, which required sugar cooked to a precise thread and a good deal of nerve, and raw egg-white icings, which needed eggs and long beating by hand. Gelatine may have offered a third way: cheap, eggless, and said to be reliable in warm kitchens where an egg-white icing might refuse to dry. Commercial granulated gelatine of the kind sold in envelopes came later; a cook in 1877 would more likely have bought sheets, shreds or isinglass, all of which needed careful dissolving and straining before use, which may explain the recipe's insistence on both.