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Snow Grapes
Wash and dry carefully bunches of grapes, large or cut into smaller clusters. Fasten a looped string to each stem. Whisk the white of an egg partially and in this dip the clusters then sift over them powdered sugar till they are thickly covered. Hang by the strings over plates or lay on platters and set on ice for several hours.
This is a frosted-fruit garnish, and the problem is structural rather than a matter of timing or temperature: the coating is raw egg white that is never heated at any point before it is eaten.
- The egg white is never cookedNothing in the method brings the egg above room temperature, and the grapes are then held on ice for hours and served cold. Salmonella on or in a shell egg is not reduced by whisking, by sugar, or by chilling.
- Sugar is not a safeguard hereSugar is not a reliable safeguard here -- a thick dusting of powdered sugar looks like a seal, but the layer against the fruit stays damp, and there is no reason to assume the sugar concentration in that film is high enough to inhibit bacteria. Several hours of holding should not be counted on as protection.
- Chilling on ice is not refrigerationA platter set on ice holds the fruit well above freezing, and warmer still where the grapes touch the plate. That is not a temperature to rely on over several hours.
- Who it is served toFrosted grapes are a decorative, hand-eaten sweet, and anyone at the table may take one, including children and the elderly, who are least able to tolerate an egg-borne infection.
- The garnish is also structuralThere is no way to salvage this by cooking, because the whole effect depends on the raw white staying pliable enough to grip sugar and then drying to a matte shell. Heating it destroys the dish.
- If you want frosted grapesUse a current recipe written for pasteurized egg product or a sugar-and-gum coating. Do not adapt the method above.
- A note on the vessels"Set on ice" means the icebox or a bed of crushed ice, not a freezer, and "powdered sugar" in books of this period sometimes means finely ground granulated rather than the cornstarch-blended confectioners' sugar sold now.
Frosted or "snow" fruit is often associated with the fashion for the decorated dessert table, where grapes, currants, cherries and small pears were given a crystalline coat and piled in a frame as a centrepiece that could be eaten at the end of the meal. The trick of hanging each cluster by a looped string is a practical one: it lets the coating dry without flattening on one side, the same reasoning behind dipping and hanging candied fruit. The recipe survives today as frosted grapes for cheese boards and cakes, though modern versions are built on pasteurized whites or gum-based glazes for exactly the reason the original method is no longer recommended.