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Fig Marguerites
Put in top of double boiler 7/8 cup sugar and 3 tablespoons water. Stir until sugar is dissolved as much as possible. There will still be small sugar crystals remaining. Wash sugar crystals from inside of double boiler with pastry brush dipped in cold water. Add 1 egg white, unbeaten. Place over hot water and cook, beating constantly with egg beater for 7 to 12 minutes or until mixture will hold its shape. Add 1 tablespoon marshmallow cream and 1/4 teaspoon vanilla, and fold over and over until again stiff enough to hold its shape. Add 1/3 cup (3) figs cut in small pieces. Pile on Small round crackers and bake at 375 degrees F. for 10 minutes or until delicately brown. This rule will cover 3 dozen small crackers. Should frosting be too soft to hold its shape after adding marshmallow cream, it may be again placed over hot water, and folded gently over and over, until it becomes slightly granular around the edges. Remove from hot water, and continue folding over gently until of the desired stiffness.
This is a seven-minute frosting folded with chopped figs, spread on crackers and baked until the meringue takes color. It is quick, but it depends on getting the egg-white foam stiff before anything else goes in.
- The hinge: keep the water hot, not boilingThe bowl should sit over water at a bare simmer and not touch it. Water at a hard boil will scramble the egg white against the metal and the frosting will never hold its shape.
- Beat the whole timeSeven to twelve minutes of constant beating, as the recipe directs; a powered hand mixer will tend toward the shorter end of that range, a hand-cranked beater toward the longer. The mixture is ready when the beater leaves ridges that stay put and a lifted mass holds a peak.
- 7/8 cup sugarThat is one cup less two tablespoons, about 175 g. The instruction to brush stray crystals from the sides with a damp pastry brush is worth following, since undissolved sugar seeds graininess.
- Marshmallow creamMarshmallow creme in a jar, the same product sold today. One tablespoon is a stabilizer and a softener, not a flavor; it slackens the frosting slightly, which is why the recipe explains how to re-stiffen it over the hot water.
- The figsAlmost certainly dried figs rather than fresh, though the recipe does not specify; it counts one third cup as three figs. Snip off the hard stem ends and cut the pieces small, no larger than a pea, or they tear the meringue as you fold.
- The crackersPlain round soda crackers or butter crackers, unsalted or lightly salted, about 2 inches across. Set them on a parchment-lined sheet; the sugar that runs off will weld to bare metal.
- Oven and timing375°F is already modern. Ten minutes browns the peaks while the inside stays marshmallowy; another two or three minutes gives a drier, crisper meringue. Watch them, as they go from delicate tan to scorched quickly.
- Yield and keepingThree dozen, which the recipe states, and they are a one-serving-each item alongside salad, fruit or coffee. Meringue on a cracker softens within hours in humid weather, so bake the day you serve them.
Marguerites were a familiar American teatime and luncheon trifle from the 1890s through the 1920s: a boiled or seven-minute meringue piled on a soda cracker or wafer, studded with nuts, dates, figs or coconut, and baked just long enough to set and brown. Cookbooks of the period print several variations. The name is often linked to the woman's name Marguerite, in the way Charlottes and Madeleines are explained, but this is traditional explanation rather than documented etymology. The form made sense in a household kitchen: it turned a few pantry staples and one egg white into three dozen individual sweets that could be handed round with a salad course. Jarred marshmallow spread became a common grocery item in the early twentieth century, so its appearance here suggests a later rather than earlier version of the dish.