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Icing (Whites of two eggs beaten)
Whites of two eggs, beaten to a froth.
One pound of sugar, dissolved and boiled in a small teacup of water. Then strain the sugar and pour it into the egg, beating it hard until cool. Add one-half teaspoonful lemon acid.--L.D.L.
This is a boiled icing — what a modern pastry kitchen calls Italian meringue — and everything depends on the state of the sugar syrup when it hits the whites.
- The hinge: syrup stageThe recipe says only "boiled," but for an icing of this type that means a syrup taken to the soft-ball stage, around 238-240F on a thermometer, not merely brought to a simmer. Syrup poured in below that will slump and never set; taken much past 245F it turns the icing stiff and short before you can spread it.
- A small teacup of waterReckon a teacup at roughly half a cup, and "small" at the lower end of that. The exact amount matters little since it boils off; the thermometer, not the clock or the volume, tells you when the syrup is ready.
- One pound of sugarAbout 2 1/4 cups granulated. Paired with two whites (about 60-70 g), this gives a generous, quite sweet icing.
- Lemon acidCitric acid, once sold in crystals for household use. The recipe calls for half a teaspoonful; a modern cook will find about 1/8 teaspoon dissolved in a few drops of water enough, or substitute 1 to 2 teaspoons of lemon juice. Added at the end as it is here, its job is flavour and brightness.
- StrainingWorth doing as written — it catches any sugar crystals that formed on the side of the pan, which would seed the whole batch grainy.
- Pouring and beatingAdd the syrup in a thin steady stream down the inside of the bowl while the mixer runs, never onto the beater, which will fling threads of hot sugar. "Beating it hard until cool" is seven to ten minutes in a stand mixer, until the bowl is barely warm and the meringue holds a firm peak.
- Working timeSpread it while it is still slightly warm and glossy. It skins over fairly quickly and sets to a soft, marshmallowy crust rather than the hard shell of a royal icing.
- YieldEnough to cover the top and sides of a two-layer 8- or 9-inch cake, or to frost about 24 cupcakes.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions signed with initials like the "L.D.L." here, carries several icings, and the division between them is instructive: an uncooked icing of whites beaten with sifted sugar, and this one, where boiling syrup does the work. "Lemon acid" is citric acid, sold by druggists and grocers in crystal form well into the twentieth century as a cheap and shelf-stable stand-in for fresh lemons, and it turns up throughout nineteenth-century American cookbooks in icings, jellies and summer drinks.