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Orange Icing
In above recipe substitute grated rind and juice of 1 orange for the lemon, and add a little lemon juice.
This is a one-line variation on the lemon icing printed immediately above it, so everything depends on the base recipe: a bowl of sifted confectioners' sugar moistened with citrus juice, sometimes bound with a little unbeaten egg white or cream. Treat the orange as a substitution in both flavour and liquid volume.
- The instruction that mattersAn orange yields far more juice than a lemon and it is much less acidic, so the icing will slacken and taste flat if you simply pour it all in. Add the juice a teaspoon at a time until the icing just falls from the spoon in a thick ribbon, and keep the rest back.
- Why the lemon juice returnsThe "little lemon juice" is not an afterthought. It restores the sharpness that orange alone cannot supply and keeps the sugar from tasting cloying; the recipe gives no quantity, so add it a few drops at a time and taste.
- Zest before juicingGrate the rind while the orange is whole and firm, taking only the coloured layer. The white pith is bitter, and the zest carries nearly all the aroma, since the oils in the peel survive the sugar better than the juice does.
- Sugar namesPeriod books use confectioners', icing, XXXX or pulverized sugar for finely ground sugar of this kind, though the terms were not always strictly interchangeable. Sift it after measuring; lumps in an uncooked icing will not dissolve and show as grit.
- If the base uses raw egg whiteMany uncooked icings of this era are bound with unbeaten white, which is never heated. Use pasteurized whites in a carton if you want that texture, or leave the egg out and work with juice and a spoonful of cream alone.
- ColourGrated orange rind gives flecks rather than an even orange tint, and the icing sets to a pale cream. Do not add liquid colouring in the hope of matching a modern bakery finish.
- Yield and settingQuantities are not repeated here, so yield depends on the base recipe; an icing built on about 2 cups of sifted sugar would cover the top and sides of one 8- or 9-inch layer cake, or roughly a dozen small cakes. It crusts at room temperature but stays soft underneath, so ice the cake the day it is served.
The Five Roses Cook Book was issued by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Winnipeg and Montreal, compiled largely from recipes sent in by Canadian users of the company's flour, and it was very widely distributed in the years around the First World War. The brevity here reflects the book's habit of printing icings as short variations on a preceding recipe, so a family of icings occupies a few inches of column. Oranges reached Canadian towns from Florida and California by rail by this date, and orange juice on its own lacks the acid to cut plain sugar, which is why a little lemon is called for.