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Marshmallow Frosting
1 cup brown sugar 1 cup white sugar 1 cup water 1 tablespoon vinegar 2 eggs (whites) ¼ pound marshmallows (see marshmallow recipe).
Boil sugar, water and vinegar till thick like candy, then stir in the egg whites and marshmallows. Boil again and ice cake.
A boiled or "seven-minute" style frosting with melted marshmallow folded through. The original assumes you know how sugar boiling works; the two things it leaves out are the thermometer reading and the fact that the egg whites should be beaten before they meet the syrup.
- The hinge: how the whites go inBeat the whites stiff first, then pour the hot syrup into them in a thin stream while beating hard. Stirring cold whites into a candy syrup and returning it to the boil, as written, will set them in threads and give you a grainy, curdled icing.
- "Thick like candy"The book gives no temperature; in modern terms this is soft-ball stage, roughly 238-240F on a candy thermometer, or a drop that forms a slack ball when pressed in cold water. Much below that and the frosting may never set; boiled well past soft ball it tends to set hard and crumbly on the cake.
- The marshmallowsA quarter pound is 4 oz, about 16 large modern marshmallows or 2 cups of miniatures. Cut them up and fold them in off the heat at the end -- the residual warmth melts them without further cooking.
- The vinegarOne tablespoon of acid inverts part of the sugar and keeps the syrup from crystallising. It is not there for flavour and it will not be tasted; do not leave it out.
- Brown sugarMuch of the brown sugar of the period was less refined and more strongly flavoured than today's light brown, though refined grades were also on sale. Use light brown for a pale caramel-coloured frosting, dark brown if you want it to read distinctly of molasses.
- "Boil again"Ignore this instruction. Once the whites are in, the mixture only needs beating -- over a pan of simmering water if it seems slack -- until it holds a peak and cools to spreadable.
- Yield and working timeEnough for a two-layer 8- or 9-inch cake, generously. Spread it while still warm; boiled frostings skin over quickly and tear the cake surface if you wait.
The Five Roses Cook Book was issued by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company and distributed to buyers of its flour, and its frosting chapter reflects what a Canadian household kitchen could reliably do in the years around its publication: boil sugar, beat eggs, and finish a plain layer cake. Marshmallow frosting belongs to the moment when marshmallows were becoming a manufactured pantry item rather than a confectioner's project -- the older sweet took its name and its texture from the mucilage of the marsh mallow root, but by the turn of the century gelatin had largely replaced the root, and the book's own cross-reference to a marshmallow recipe shows the transition mid-stride, with cooks still expected to be able to make their own. The pairing of brown and white sugar in one syrup gives a faint caramel note.