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Boiled Icing (One and one-fourth pound loaf)
One and one-fourth pound loaf sugar, added to one teacup of water and boiled to a thick syrup. Then strain it through thin muslin, and, while hot, stir into it the whites of three eggs beaten stiff. Then beat in the strained juice of a lemon and season with a little oil of lemon. If too thin, add a little sugar; if too stiff, add a little more white of egg.--Mrs. S.T.
This is an Italian meringue in nineteenth-century dress: hot sugar syrup beaten into stiff whites. The syrup stage is the whole recipe, and everything else is adjustment.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined white sugar sold in a hard cone or block, broken and crushed for use. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct equivalent; 1¼ lb is about 2¾ cups.
- A teacup of waterA teacup in nineteenth-century American books is usually reckoned at about ¾ cup rather than a full measuring cup, though this book does not define it. The exact figure matters less than the syrup stage, since the water boils off.
- "Boiled to a thick syrup"This is the hinge. The book gives no temperature; modern practice for an icing of this kind is soft-ball stage, about 238-240F on a thermometer. Much under that and the icing may not set; much over and it can turn grainy and stiff before you can spread it.
- Straining through muslinNineteenth-century syrup could carry scum and stray matter, which is presumably why it was filtered. Modern sugar needs no straining, and stopping to strain lets the syrup cool and thicken. Skip it.
- Adding the syrupPour it into the beaten whites in a thin steady stream with the mixer running, aimed at the side of the bowl rather than onto the beaters. Dumping hot syrup in at once scrambles threads of white through the icing.
- Lemon juiceBeat it in only after the meringue has cooled to nearly room temperature and holds a peak. The acid helps stability, but added early it slackens the mixture.
- Oil of lemonLemon essential oil, far stronger than extract. Two or three drops is a full seasoning for this quantity; more turns soapy and bitter.
- Yield and useRoughly enough to fill and cover a two-layer 9-inch cake, and possibly more. Spread it while still soft and workable; it crusts as it dries and is hard to smooth afterward. Avoid making it on a humid day, when it stays sticky and weeps.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1877), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named and initialed Virginia housekeepers, gives several icings, and the division between them is instructive: uncooked icings beat raw whites with sifted sugar, while a boiled icing pours hot syrup over the whites. The boiled version keeps better, spreads more smoothly and sets to a faint crisp shell, and boiled icings of this kind were a common American cake finish into the early twentieth century. The technique depends on refined sugar and on egg whites beaten stiff; loaf sugar was widely sold in stores by this date, and wire whisks and rotary beaters were available, though how commonly they were used in ordinary kitchens is not something this book tells us. The oil of lemon is a reminder that concentrated flavoring oils, bought from the druggist, were as common in these kitchens as alcohol-based extracts are now.