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Icing with Water Only
To a half cup of boiling water add sufficient confectioner's sugar to make of convenient stiffness for spreading. SOFT ICING (Without Egg) Use one-third part of water to granulated sugar and let boil without stirring till it threads or "ropes" when remove and let stand till barely warm. Beat then till doughlike and knead till creamy. This will keep if placed in glass in a cool spot. When needed place in double boiler with hot water in outer vessel and stir till sufficiently soft to use, then flavour.
Two icings in one entry: a quick water glaze, and a cooked sugar paste that is essentially uncooked-egg-free fondant. The second is the one that needs attention, since its only doneness cue is the behaviour of the syrup.
- The hinge: syrup temperature"Threads or ropes" is a pre-thermometer test, and it is vague. In the older tables the thread stage falls around 230-235F; most modern fondant recipes carry the syrup a little further, into the soft-ball range near 238F, to get a paste you can knead and cream. Below that it will stay runny; much above it and the mass turns hard and grainy.
- Do not stir, and mean itStirring a boiling sugar syrup seeds crystals and gives you a gritty icing. Wash any sugar off the pan sides with a wet brush, cover the pan for the first minute or two so steam rinses them down, then leave it alone.
- "Barely warm" before beatingPour the syrup onto a cool surface or into a bowl and let it drop to about 110F before you begin. Beating hot syrup produces coarse crystals; beating cool syrup is what makes it turn opaque and doughlike.
- Proportions of the water icingHalf a cup of boiling water will absorb roughly 4 cups of confectioner's sugar before it is stiff enough to spread, which is far more icing than most cakes want. Start with a quarter cup of water and add sugar in stages.
- One-third part waterThe recipe does not say whether this is by weight or by volume; read as volume it is 1 cup water to 3 cups granulated sugar, which is in the same neighbourhood as modern fondant recipes.
- Confectioner's sugar then and nowToday's confectioner's sugar contains cornstarch, which thickens a glaze slightly, and period powdered sugar may well have been coarser than modern 10X. Sift it; lumps will not beat out of a cold water icing.
- Reheating the stored fondantA double boiler is correct, but keep the water hot rather than boiling and stir gently. Overheated fondant thins, then sets dull and streaky. Flavour last, off the heat, so alcohol-based extracts do not flash off.
- StorageKneaded fondant keeps several weeks in a sealed jar in a cool place; press a piece of damp parchment or plastic against the surface so it does not skin over.
Both of these belong to the long era before butter-and-sugar frostings took over the American cake. A plain water icing, sometimes called glacé icing, was the cheapest finish available once cheap refined powdered sugar arrived in the later nineteenth century, and it is still a standard glaze on iced buns. The second recipe is fondant, from the French for "melting": a boiled syrup that is cooled and then agitated so it crystallises in grains too small for the tongue to detect. That it is offered "without egg" is the point of the heading, since egg-white icings had to be beaten up with raw white, which spoiled quickly and could not be stored in a jar.