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Cherries, Frosted
Choose large, ripe, sound cherries. Wipe them with a dry soft cloth, and dip them in a liquid made of the whites of two eggs which have been whisked to a firm froth and mixed with a quarter of a pint of spring water. As the cherries are taken out of the egg, drain them and roll them one by one in finely-sifted sugar. Put some clean writing paper on an inverted sieve, put them on this so that they do not touch one another, and let them dry till wanted. Time, six or eight hours to dry the fruit. Probable cost, 3d. to 6d. per pound. Sufficient, one pound for a small dessert-dish.
A Victorian dessert-dish garnish: fruit glazed in raw egg white, dusted with sugar and left to dry in the open air. The technique is simple, but the food safety of it does not survive contact with modern practice.
- The egg white is never cookedNothing in this method brings the egg to any temperature at all. The glaze is applied raw, sits on the fruit for six to eight hours at room temperature, and is then eaten raw. Salmonella on shell eggs remains a real risk, and a sugar crust neither pasteurises nor seals anything.
- Dilution makes it worse, not betterDilution does not help -- Whisked white thinned with a quarter of a pint of water is spread thin over sweet fruit and left standing for most of a day. Undiluted egg white has some antimicrobial character of its own; watering it down can only reduce that, and the coating offers no preservative effect.
- The drying time is the problem, not an inconvenienceSix to eight hours in a kitchen is the whole hazard window. Shortening it does not fix the recipe, because the coating is still raw when served.
- Unwashed fruitThe cherries are wiped with a dry cloth only. Surface soil and handling contamination stay put, and are then sealed under a protein glaze that is left standing all day.
- If you want frosted cherriesUse a current recipe that specifies pasteurised egg white or another commercial glaze, with proper handling instructions.
- Reading the originalA quarter of a pint in this book is imperial, about 5 fl oz or 140 ml. "Clean writing paper" is used here simply as a clean non-stick surface, the job now done by parchment; the inverted sieve is a raised rack to let air circulate underneath. "Probable cost, 3d. to 6d. per pound" is Victorian pence, a pricing note for the housekeeper rather than an instruction.
Frosted or "iced" fruit belongs to the Victorian dessert service, where the table was dressed as much as it was fed: a pyramid of grapes, cherries and currants under a sugar rime, set among glass dishes and candles at the close of dinner. Cassell's gives it in the reference manner of the period, with a probable cost per pound and a note on how much fills a small dish. Egg white as an adhesive for sugar is very old and very general, the same trick used for sugared violets, sugared rose petals and crystallised angelica, and it persisted in domestic manuals well into the twentieth century. Frosted fruit largely fell out of use along with the Victorian dessert service itself.