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Plain Frosting
White 1 egg 2 teaspoons cold water 3/4 cup confectioners' sugar 1/2 teaspoon vanilla or 1/2 tablespoon lemon juice Beat white of egg until stiff; add water and sugar. Beat thoroughly, then add flavoring. Use more sugar if needed. Spread with a broad-bladed knife. Chocolate Frosting I 1 1/2 squares chocolate 1/3 cup scalded cream Few grains salt Yolk 1 egg 1/2 teaspoon melted butter Confectioners' sugar 1/2 teaspoon vanilla Melt chocolate over hot water, add cream gradually, salt, yolk of egg, and butter. Stir in confectioners' sugar until of right consistency to spread; then add flavoring.
Both frostings on this page are built on raw egg that never reaches any temperature at all: the white is simply beaten with sugar and spread, and the chocolate version stirs a raw yolk into cream that has been scalded and then let cool with chocolate. Neither is cooked, so neither can be recommended today.
- The uncooked whiteBeating an egg white with three-quarters of a cup of confectioners' sugar and two teaspoons of water produces an icing that sets by drying, not by heat. Salmonella in or on a shell egg survives that process; the sugar concentration here is nowhere near high enough to be preservative, and the frosting sits at room temperature on the cake for hours."
- The raw yolkIn Chocolate Frosting I the cream is scalded, but it is then added gradually to melted chocolate over hot water and the yolk goes in afterwards, along with melted butter and cold sugar. The mixture never holds a temperature capable of pasteurising the yolk. Use a current frosting recipe instead.
- Why the book saw no problemThe egg-borne risk understood at the time was largely spoilage, not the invasive Salmonella serotypes later associated with intact eggs. The instruction reflects the knowledge of its day rather than carelessness.
- "Squares" of chocolateA square is one ounce of unsweetened baking chocolate, so one and a half squares is 1.5 oz. Chocolate sold in bars today is usually scored differently, and any bar labelled bittersweet or semisweet already carries sugar the recipe does not account for.
- Confectioners' sugar then and nowConfectioners' sugar of the period was not standardised as modern 10X is, and starch content varied. Both recipes leave the quantity open-ended and say to add sugar until the mass will spread, so judge by consistency rather than by the stated cup measure.
- Scalded creamScalding meant heating the cream only to the point where bubbles form at the edge of the pan, then removing it; the book does not give a temperature, and the cream is not held hot long enough to cook anything added later.
- CoverageOne egg white with three-quarters of a cup of sugar yields only a small quantity, likely enough for a thin coat on the top of a single layer rather than to fill and coat a two-layer cake.
Frostings of this kind - white of egg, sugar, a few drops of acid or flavouring, worked cold with a broad knife - were a common American home icing through the nineteenth century, and uncooked egg-white icings appear in cookery books long before mechanical beaters were widespread. The same pairing of egg white and powdered sugar underlies what is now called royal icing.