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Butter Icing
Melt a little butter and mix with icing sugar. Flavor with vanilla.
Two sentences with no quantities at all, which is typical of the short filler entries in promotional cookbooks of this era. The proportions are entirely up to the cook, so the useful information is what ratio actually works and what the finished icing does as it cools.
- Icing sugarCanadian and British "icing sugar" is what American shops sell as confectioners' or powdered sugar, cornstarch and all. Granulated sugar will not work here; there is no liquid or heat to dissolve it, and the icing will stay gritty.
- A working ratioAbout 1/4 cup (2 oz) melted butter to 2 cups icing sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla gives a spreadable glaze that covers an 8-inch cake or a dozen small tarts. Add sugar for stiffness, a teaspoon of milk or cream at a time for looseness.
- Melted, not creamedBecause the butter is melted rather than beaten, this sets firmer as it cools, more like a glaze than the fluffy buttercream the same name suggests today. Spread it while warm and work quickly.
- Sift firstIcing sugar of this period may well have been lumpier than ours, and even modern boxed sugar packs. Sift it before the butter goes in, since there is no beating stage long enough to break up lumps.
- Salt and butter typeButter of the period was often salted for keeping. If you use unsalted butter, add a pinch of salt or the sugar tastes flat.
- If it separatesToo much melted butter for the sugar and the fat will pool out as it stands. Beat in more sifted sugar off the heat until it comes back together, rather than adding liquid.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Montreal to sell Five Roses flour, and it was assembled largely from recipes sent in by customers across Canada. That may account for entries like this one, in which no amounts are given at all. Icings of melted butter beaten into sifted sugar were the everyday domestic alternative to boiled or royal icing, which needed either a sugar thermometer or a strong arm and a long beating; this one takes a minute and needs nothing but a bowl. Vanilla was a common flavouring, though the same base took lemon juice, coffee or cocoa with no other change.