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Caramel Icing (No. 2)
1¼ cups brown sugar ¼ cup white sugar ⅓ cup boiling water 2 eggs (whites) 1 teaspoon vanilla ⅓ cup English walnut meats Set Mix sugar and water and let boil till syrup threads when dropped from spoon.
Pour slowly, while beating constantly, on to the beaten whites, and continue beating until the mixture is nearly cool. in a pan of boiling water and cook, stirring constantly until mixture becomes slightly granular around the edge of dish.
Remove from range and beat until mixture will hold its shape. Add vanilla and nutmeats broken in pieces. Pour on cake and spread with back of spoon, making a rough surface.
A boiled-syrup meringue frosting, essentially a brown-sugar Italian meringue finished over hot water. The printed text here is scrambled — the word "Set" has been knocked out of sequence — so read the method carefully before starting.
- Restoring the garbled orderThe instructions belong in this order: boil the sugars and water to the thread stage; pour slowly onto the beaten whites while beating; beat until nearly cool; then set the bowl in a pan of boiling water and cook, stirring, until the mixture granulates slightly at the edge; remove and beat to a spreadable shape. The stray "Set" after the ingredient list is the start of that fourth step.
- The thread stage, in numbersA syrup that "threads when dropped from spoon" is 230–235F on a thermometer. Below that the icing never firms; much above it and you are into soft-ball territory and a candy-hard crust.
- The hinge: watch for the granular edgeThe second cooking over boiling water is what sets this frosting, and the only cue given is a slight graininess at the rim of the bowl. Stop there. Cook past it and the whole batch crystallises into something you cannot spread.
- Brown sugarPeriod brown sugar was moister and less uniform than today's packed light brown. Light brown gives the intended caramel note; dark brown makes a considerably more assertive, almost molasses-flavoured icing.
- English walnutsSimply the common walnut, called that to distinguish it from the native black walnut. Ordinary shelled walnut halves broken by hand are what is wanted — chopping them fine loses the texture the recipe is after.
- Egg whitesTwo whites come to roughly 1/4 cup. The hot syrup poured over them, followed by the cooking over boiling water, brings them past a safe temperature.
- Weather mattersMeringue frostings sulk in humid conditions and stay tacky. On a damp day expect a longer beat and a softer set.
- YieldRoughly enough for a two-layer 8- or 9-inch cake; the recipe says only to pour it on the cake and spread it rough with the back of a spoon.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company to promote its flour, and like many milling-company books of the early twentieth century it gives considerable space to cake, and therefore to frosting. Boiled icings of this type — hot syrup beaten into egg whites — spread as refined sugar became cheap and ranges more reliable, and they filled the gap between plain confectioners'-sugar glazes and true confectionery. The "No. 2" in the title most likely marks it as an alternative to another caramel icing in the same section, a common convention in community and promotional cookbooks that gathered several contributed versions of the same thing. Brown sugar with walnuts was a familiar North American flavour combination of the period, appearing in penuche as well as in layer cakes.