Home › Cake Fillings and Frosting › Creamed Walnuts
Creamed Walnuts
White 1 egg 3/4 teaspoon vanilla 1/2 tablespoon cold water 1 lb. confectioners' sugar English walnuts Put egg, water, and vanilla in a bowl, and beat until well blended. Add sugar gradually until stiff enough to knead. Shape in balls, flatten, and place halves of walnuts opposite each other on each piece. Sometimes all the sugar will not be required.
This is an uncooked fondant: raw egg white bound with confectioners' sugar and never heated at any stage. That single fact governs everything below.
- Why it fails todayThe egg white is never brought to any temperature at all. Salmonella in shell eggs can be an interior contamination problem, so a clean-looking egg gives no protection, and a stiff sugar paste is not acid or dry enough at the surface to reliably kill anything mixed into it.
- Sugar is not a safeguardVery high sugar concentration slows bacterial growth but does not sterilise. In a kneaded fondant the water from the egg and the half tablespoon added stays available enough that surviving organisms simply persist. Use a current recipe for walnut fondant, of which there are many built on a cooked syrup or on pasteurised whites.
- Confectioners' sugar then and nowPeriod confectioners' sugar was more variably ground than modern 10X, so the amount needed to stiffen a paste varied; the recipe's closing note allows for that.
- "English walnuts"The ordinary walnut sold everywhere now, Juglans regia, named to distinguish it from the native American black walnut, which is stronger and more resinous.
- YieldA pound of sugar with one white makes roughly 40 to 50 small centres.