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Marguerites II
1 1/2 cups sugar 2 tablespoons shredded cocoanut 1/2 cup water 1/4 teaspoon vanilla 5 marshmallows 1 cup English walnut meats Whites 2 eggs Saltines Boil sugar and water until syrup will thread. Remove to back of range and add marshmallows cut in pieces. Pour onto the whites of eggs beaten until stiff; then add cocoanut, vanilla, and nut meats. Spread saltines with mixture and bake until delicately browned.
A meringue-and-nut topping baked onto salted crackers, from the era when the sweet-salt combination was a novelty at afternoon teas. The whole thing hinges on the syrup: cook it correctly and the meringue holds its shape in the oven.
- Thread stage"Until syrup will thread" is 230-235F on a candy thermometer, the point at which a spoonful drawn up trails a fine thread. Undercooked syrup gives a meringue that weeps and slides off the cracker; taken much past 240F it sets too stiff to spread.
- Pouring the syrupBeat the whites to stiff peaks first, then add the hot syrup in a thin steady stream at the side of the bowl while beating continuously. Dumping it in at once cooks lumps of egg white into the mixture. This is an Italian meringue in all but name.
- Back of the rangeOn a wood or coal range the back was the cool zone. Today, take the pan off the heat entirely, add the cut marshmallows, and stir until they melt into the syrup from residual heat.
- MarshmallowsPeriod marshmallows were probably denser and less aerated than modern ones, so five of the old sort would amount to somewhat more than five modern ones; no exact equivalence can be given.
- CocoanutShredded coconut of this period was usually unsweetened and fairly dry. Unsweetened desiccated coconut keeps the balance; sweetened flake will push an already very sweet mixture further.
- English walnut meatsOrdinary walnuts, as distinct from the black walnuts common in American kitchens then. Chop them to roughly pea size so the topping spreads, and toast them briefly if you want the flavour to carry against the sugar.
- OvenThe recipe gives no temperature. A moderate oven, around 325-350F, for 8 to 12 minutes on a parchment-lined sheet is a reasonable modern equivalent. Watch closely from the eight-minute mark; the meringue goes from pale gold to scorched quickly.
- Yield and keepingEnough topping for roughly two to three dozen saltines, depending how thickly it is spread. They are best the day they are made, as the crackers soften overnight; store loosely covered rather than airtight.
Marguerites were a fixture of American cookbooks and women's magazines from the 1890s through the 1920s, and nearly always follow the same formula: a boiled-sugar meringue with nuts spread on a salted cracker or wafer and briefly baked. The name is the French word for the daisy, and is generally taken to refer to the pale, ruffled look of the baked meringue rather than to any particular cook or place, though this explanation is traditional rather than documented. They belong to the moment when commercially baked soda crackers became cheap and reliable enough to be treated as a ready-made base, and when marshmallows had shifted from a confection made with actual marsh mallow root to a factory product. The numbering here simply distinguishes this from an earlier Marguerite recipe in the same book.