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ICING
Whites of two eggs, two. tea-cups granulated sugar; boil the sugar until clear with just enough water to moisten it. Having beaten the eggs to a stiff froth, pour boiling syrup very slowly over them. Dissolve one-half tea-spoon of citric acid in a small table-spoon of water, and put enough in to make a pleasant tart-add a little essence of lemon.
This is a boiled icing — what a modern pastry book would call an Italian meringue — and the whole thing turns on the temperature of the syrup. Everything else is detail.
- The hinge: syrup stage"Boil the sugar until clear" is the vaguest instruction in the recipe, since sugar syrup clears the moment it dissolves. For an icing that sets rather than slumps, the syrup needs to reach the soft-ball stage, 238–240F on a candy thermometer. Below that it stays sticky; much above it and the icing turns grainy and stiff before you can spread it.
- Tea-cupsA tea-cup is conventionally reckoned smaller than a modern measuring cup, around three-quarters of a cup, though the book does not define its measures. On that reading two tea-cups of sugar is roughly 1 1/2 cups. The water is unspecified; something on the order of 1/3 cup is about what "just enough to moisten it" amounts to.
- Citric acidA druggist's item in this period, sold as crystals, and still available as sour salt in the spice or canning aisle. Half a teaspoon dissolved in water is a genuinely tart dose; add it a few drops at a time at the end and taste. Lemon juice can stand in, but it is far weaker by volume — several tablespoons rather than teaspoons — and it thins the icing.
- Essence of lemonIn this period usually oil of lemon dissolved in alcohol, and possibly stronger than a modern bottled extract. The recipe asks only for "a little": start with about 1/4 teaspoon and add more after tasting.
- Pouring the syrupWith a stand mixer, beat the whites to stiff peaks first, then pour the boiling syrup in a thin steady stream down the inside of the bowl with the machine running on medium. Syrup that hits the whisk sprays and sets in threads against the side of the bowl. Keep beating until the bowl is only warm to the touch, five to eight minutes.
- Egg safetySyrup boiled to soft-ball heats the whites substantially, and Italian meringue made this way is generally treated as cooked rather than raw, though how hot the mixture actually finishes depends on how much syrup there is, how fast it goes in, and how much heat the bowl takes. If your syrup runs cooler than soft-ball, or the icing is for someone pregnant, elderly or immune-compromised, use pasteurized egg whites.
- Yield and handlingTwo whites and this much sugar is a modest quantity: enough to cover an 8- or 9-inch cake, and only just enough to fill and cover two layers. Spread it while it is still slightly warm — it crusts quickly and cracks if worked after that.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping (1877), compiled by Estelle Woods Wilcox from recipes contributed by Ohio housewives, appeared during the period when granulated sugar was becoming widely available alongside the cone-shaped loaf sugar that earlier cooks had to nip and pound. Uniform granulated sugar dissolves cleanly and takes a more predictable syrup stage, though boiled icings were being made before it was common. Citric acid crystals from the druggist were one way to get a clean sour note when lemons were dear in inland winter markets. Cake chapters of this era often ran several icings side by side, from a plain uncooked one of egg white beaten with pulverized sugar up to a cooked version like this, which keeps its gloss better than the raw kind.