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Raspberry Icing
Put the white of an egg into a bowl, stir in with it a pound of powdered and sifted sugar and as much raspberry-juice as will make a smooth paste. Whip it well till it is thick and light, spread it at once over whatever is to be covered with it, and dry in a cool oven.
This is royal icing tinted and flavoured with fruit juice rather than water. The only real difficulty is judging the liquid, since raspberry juice varies enormously in strength and sweetness.
- Work fastEgg-white icing begins to crust within minutes of being beaten, which is why the original says to spread it at once. Have the cake or biscuits ready before you start, and keep the bowl under a damp cloth if you must pause.
- Powdered and sifted sugarIn Cassell's this means sugar crushed and passed through a fine sieve, so modern icing (confectioners') sugar is the closest available equivalent, though it is finer and usually contains a little cornstarch. One pound is about 3½ to 4 cups; sift it even if the box says it needs no sifting, as lumps will not beat out.
- How much juiceThe original gives no quantity because the fruit decides. Add strained raspberry juice a little at a time; a pound of sugar with one egg white will take several tablespoons before it comes together, so go slowly only as you near the end. The paste should hold a soft peak and still spread, not pour.
- Strain the juicePress the raspberries through a fine sieve or muslin. Seeds and pulp will speckle the icing and stop it setting to a smooth surface.
- One egg whiteA large modern egg white is about 30 g; the book gives no size, and period eggs generally ran smaller, so expect to adjust. Because the icing is never really cooked, use pasteurised whites (carton or powdered) if serving anyone very young, elderly, pregnant or unwell.
- A cool ovenNo temperature is given; 'cool' in period usage is usually reckoned somewhere in the region of 200-250F, with the door propped ajar, and the aim here is only to dry the surface rather than bake it. Overnight at room temperature in a dry kitchen does the same job and is kinder to the colour, which browns and dulls with heat.
- Colour will fadeRaspberry juice gives a clear pink when fresh but drifts towards brownish-mauve as it dries and ages. Ice the day you intend to serve.
- YieldA pound of sugar makes enough to coat the top and sides of one 8- or 9-inch cake generously, or to flood four to five dozen small biscuits.
Icing beaten from egg white and sifted sugar is the ancestor of what we now call royal icing, a technique English confectioners had in hand well before Cassell's compiled this dictionary in the 1870s and reissued it through the following decades. What dates this particular version is the raspberry juice: synthetic coal-tar colours only became cheap and general later in the century, and before that a pink icing generally meant cochineal or fruit. The instruction to dry rather than bake is also a reminder of how ranges worked then: the cooling oven after the day's baking was a resource in itself, used for meringues, drying herbs and setting icings.