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Wellesley Frosting
2 cups sugar, 1/2 cup boiling water, Whites 2 eggs, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla. Put sugar and water in saucepan, stir until sugar has dissolved. Bring to boiling point and let boil vigorously, without stirring, until syrup will thread when dropped from top of spoon. Put whites of eggs in saucepan and beat until stiff. Pour on the syrup gradually, while beating constantly, and continue the beating, until mixture is nearly stiff enough to spread. Place saucepan containing mixture in a larger saucepan, containing a small quantity of boiling water, place on range and cook, stirring constantly (scraping from bottom and sides of pan) until mixture becomes granular around sides of pan. Remove from saucepan of hot water, and beat until mixture will hold its shape; then add vanilla. Pour on cake and spread evenly, using a knife. This is one of the varieties of thick, soft frostings which has recently met with so much favor.
A boiled-syrup meringue frosting deliberately taken one step past smooth so that it sets with a faint fudge-like grain. The cooking over hot water is the whole point of the recipe, not a fussy extra.
- The syrup stage"Will thread when dropped from top of spoon" is a loose old test; the thread stage corresponds to roughly 230-235F on a candy thermometer, and it is the later cooking over hot water, not a hotter syrup, that makes this frosting hold its shape. Wash any crystals off the pan sides with a wet brush before it boils, and do not stir once boiling.
- Beat the whites first, not afterHave the whites at stiff peaks before the syrup is ready, and add the syrup in a thin steady stream down the side of the bowl. A stand mixer on medium-high does what the original expects of a wire whisk and a strong arm.
- Why the hot-water bathReturning the meringue to a pan set over boiling water and stirring until it grains at the edges is what gives Wellesley frosting its short, slightly sandy set rather than a glossy marshmallow finish. Take it off the moment you see that graining; past that point it stiffens into something unspreadable.
- Scrape as instructedThe "scraping from bottom and sides" is not filler. Sugar crystallizes first where the pan is hottest, and dragging those crystals back into the mass is how the graining seeds evenly instead of in lumps.
- Flavoring goes in coldVanilla is added after the pan comes off the heat because the alcohol carries the aroma off with the steam. Half a teaspoon in this quantity is restrained by modern taste; a full teaspoon is reasonable.
- YieldTwo cups of sugar makes enough to fill and cover a two-layer 8- or 9-inch cake generously.
- Weather mattersBoiled frostings are unreliable on a humid day, absorbing moisture and refusing to set. Spread it promptly and expect it to firm within an hour at room temperature.
Walter Baker & Co. of Dorchester, Massachusetts, published Choice Recipes as a promotional booklet for its chocolate and cocoa, gathering contributions from cooking-school teachers of the period, Fannie Farmer's circle among them. The Wellesley name attaches to a small family of confections associated with Wellesley College, the best known being Wellesley fudge cake; the story generally told is that students made fudge in their rooms in the 1890s and that the flavor migrated into cakes and frostings from there. It is a tradition rather than a documented origin. Note that this frosting contains no chocolate at all -- what it borrows from fudge is the texture, the deliberate graining that separates it from a plain glossy boiled icing. The closing line, that thick soft frostings "recently met with so much favor," suggests such frostings were something of a fashion at the time of writing.