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Raisin Icing
1 cup sugar ½ cup water. 1 cup raisins (stoned and chopped fine) 1 egg (white) Vanilla Boil sugar and water till it ropes, then add the raisins and fold in the white of egg. 1 egg Flavor.
This entry is one of the more compressed in the book — the sugar and water are called for in the method but never given quantities, and the egg is listed twice. What survives is a standard boiled (Italian meringue) icing with chopped raisins folded through.
- The missing quantitiesNo amount of sugar or water is printed, and there is no way to recover the author's intent from the page. Boiled frostings of this era generally run about three parts sugar to one part water by volume, with one egg white per cup of sugar; treat that as an inference, not the original recipe.
- "Till it ropes"This is the syrup stage where a spoonful drawn up trails a thread rather than dropping cleanly — on a thermometer somewhere in the thread-to-soft-ball range, roughly 230-240F, which is where boiled icings are generally taken. Under-boiled syrup gives a frosting that never sets; over-boiled gives one that turns grainy and tears the cake.
- Reverse the order givenDo not fold egg white into hot syrup. Beat the white to soft peaks first, then pour the syrup down the side of the bowl in a thin stream while beating continuously. Adding white to syrup cooks it into threads instead of a smooth meringue.
- When the raisins go inAdd them after the meringue is beaten thick and no longer steaming, not into the boiling syrup as written — hot syrup can draw moisture out of the fruit and encourage the sugar to crystallize. Chop them fine so the icing still spreads.
- Stoned raisins"Stoned" means seeded. Nearly all raisins sold now are seedless, so this step is done for you; a brief soak in hot water, drained and patted dry, keeps them from being leathery in the finished icing.
- Egg white and heatThe hot syrup raises the temperature of the white considerably if it is poured in slowly with continuous beating, which is generally held to make this style of frosting safer than an uncooked royal icing, though it should not be relied on to pasteurize the egg. Pasteurized whites are an option if you are cooking for anyone frail.
- Work fastBoiled icing sets as it cools and cannot be reworked once it skins over. Have the cake on its stand and the spatula in hand before the syrup comes off the heat.
- YieldWorking from the inferred quantities, one egg white and a cup of sugar should give roughly enough to frost the top and sides of a single 8-inch layer, or to fill and top two thin layers if spread sparingly.
Boiled icing — sugar syrup beaten into egg white — was the standard frosting of the North American home kitchen from the late nineteenth century until buttercream displaced it, a shift often attributed to the spread of electric mixers and shelf-stable shortening. It needed no butter, kept its gloss, and set to a firm crust that traveled well, all of which mattered when cakes were carried to church suppers and fairs. The Five Roses Cook Book, issued by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company and assembled largely from recipes sent in by Canadian housewives, is full of such contributed entries, and the doubling and dropped measurements here may perhaps reflect a submission set in type without much editorial checking, though that can only be guessed at. Adding raisins to a white icing was a thrifty way to make a plain cake read as fruited or festive without the expense of a proper fruitcake batter.