Uncooked Icing
The whites of two eggs One and one-half cups of powdered sugar One-half teaspoon of Larkin Orange Flavoring Extract Beat the whites of the eggs until stiff and gradually beat in the sugar.
A three-ingredient uncooked icing of the sort that filled cake chapters before anyone worried about raw egg. The problem is exactly that: nothing in this recipe ever reaches a temperature that would make the egg white safe.
- Why it fails nowThe egg whites are beaten and eaten raw, and the icing sits at room temperature on a finished cake, often for a day or more. Shell eggs can carry Salmonella on the shell and, less often, within the white and yolk, and sugar does not kill it. Nothing here brings the egg above about 20C at any point.
- Sugar is not a preservative hereOne and a half cups of sugar to two whites raises the sugar concentration but not reliably to the level that inhibits bacterial growth in a hard-set confection, and in any case that would only slow growth, not remove pathogens already present.
- Who is most at riskRaw-egg icings are a poor idea for anyone, and specifically unsuitable for young children, pregnant women, the elderly and anyone immunocompromised — which is to say most of the people a birthday cake is aimed at.
- If you want this style of icingUse a current recipe. Modern equivalents reach the same texture by cooking the whites and sugar over water, or by using pasteurised whites or meringue powder; follow one of those in full rather than adapting the lines above.
- Larkin Orange Flavoring ExtractA house brand sold by the Larkin mail-order company and long gone. Any orange extract stands in at the same half teaspoon, though extracts vary in strength — taste before committing.
- Powdered sugarModern powdered sugar is finely ground sugar with a little starch added to keep it loose; in older usage the term often meant no more than sugar ground finer than granulated. Sifting helps, as unsifted lumps will not beat out.
Plain uncooked icings of this kind — whites, powdered sugar, a flavouring, beaten together in a bowl — were long a familiar option in American cookbooks, alongside boiled and buttercream icings. It was quick, needed no thermometer and no stove, and it set to a firm shell on the cake as the surface dried. The specified Larkin extract marks the book's origin as promotional literature: the Larkin Company of Buffalo, New York, built an enormous mail-order business in soap and household goods, and distributed cookbooks and premiums that named its own grocery lines in the ingredient lists. Recipes of this kind circulated for decades without comment, since the modern understanding of Salmonella in intact shell eggs — and the pasteurised whites and meringue powders that answer it — belongs to the later twentieth century.