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Date Whip
Beat stiff the whites of 6 eggs. When half whipped add ½ teaspoon cream of tartar and whip stiff. Add 1 cup sifted granulated sugar, 1 cup stoned and chopped dates, and 1 cup broken English walnuts. Bake in a loaf cake pan in moderately hot oven for ¾ hour. Serve with whipped cream. Can be served hot or cold.
A meringue-based date and nut pudding, closer to a chewy torte than anything boiled, despite where the book files it. The technique is straightforward; the pitfalls are oven heat and folding.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives no figure; "moderately hot" in this period is usually read as somewhere around 375-400F. A meringue batter this heavy browns readily, so watch the top after 30 minutes and tent with foil if it darkens before the centre sets.
- The hinge: fold, do not beatOnce the whites are stiff, the sugar, dates and nuts must be folded in with a spatula in as few strokes as possible. Stirring them in deflates the whites and the pudding bakes into a dense, weeping slab.
- Sugar added all at onceThe original dumps a full cup of sugar into the finished meringue, which is not how a modern cook would build it. Adding it in a slow stream while the mixer is still running, before the whites are fully stiff, gives a more stable, glossy base that survives the fruit and nuts.
- Stoned dates"Stoned" simply means pitted. Buy pitted dates and chop them; toss the pieces with a spoonful of the sugar so they do not clump into a single sticky mass when folded in.
- English walnutsThe ordinary walnut of the supermarket, as distinguished from the American black walnut, which is stronger and more resinous. Broken means roughly cracked into pieces, not finely chopped.
- Cream of tartarStill sold in the spice aisle. It acidifies the whites so they whip higher and hold; half a teaspoon for six whites is on the low side of the usual ratio but works as written.
- The panA standard 9x5 loaf pan is a tight fit for six whites plus two cups of solids. Butter and line it with parchment, fill no more than two-thirds, and expect it to rise and then settle as it cools. Loosen the edges while warm or the caramelised sugar glues it in.
- Yield and servingServes eight to ten in modest slices. Warm it is soft and souffle-like; cold it firms into something chewy and toffee-edged, which is the better version. Lightly sweetened whipped cream, as directed, is the right foil for so much sugar.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Montreal and Winnipeg to promote its flour, and it was distributed widely enough across Canada to become a fixture in prairie and Maritime kitchens alike. The irony of this particular page is that the recipe contains no flour at all, and it is not boiled either, despite sitting under "Boiled Puddings" -- flour-company books like this one were assembled from reader contributions. Egg-white bakes stiffened with dates and walnuts were popular in the early twentieth century for a practical reason: a cook with a bowl of leftover whites could turn them into a company dessert with no butter and no flour. Similar formulas circulate under names like date torte and "food for the gods."