Home › Cake Icings and Fillings › Boiled Fluffy Frosting
Boiled Fluffy Frosting
2 C sugar. 1/2 C water. Whites of 2 eggs. 12 t lemon extract 14 t cream of tartar Put sugar, water and cream of tartar in saucepan and boil without stirring until the "soft ball" stage is reached. Remove from fire and add gradually six tablespoons of the syrup to the stiffly beaten whites. Return remaining syrup to fire and boil until it spins a thread. Add slowly to the egg-white mixture. Beat very little and when about cold, add flavoring. When slightly glazed, spread upon cake. Mrs. A. L. Johnson. 1/2 C maple sugar
This is an Italian-meringue frosting, but the page as printed has lost most of its ingredient list to bad type or bad transcription. What survives is the method, which is sound and still worth following.
- The missing quantities"12 t lemon extract 14 t cream of tartar" is almost certainly ½ teaspoon lemon extract and ¼ teaspoon cream of tartar. The sugar, water and number of egg whites are simply absent apart from the stray "1/2 C maple sugar" at the end; a standard boiled frosting of this type runs about 1½ cups sugar, ½ cup water and 2 to 3 egg whites, but that is a reconstruction, not what the book says.
- Soft ball, in numbersSoft ball is 235–240°F on a candy thermometer: a spoonful dropped into cold water forms a ball that flattens between the fingers.
- "Spins a thread"Period books use this phrase inconsistently, usually for syrup around 230-235F. Here it is meant to come after soft ball, so the second boiling clearly takes the syrup further; the precise temperature intended cannot be recovered from the text.
- Why two additionsThe recipe deliberately splits the pour: six tablespoons of the soft-ball syrup goes in first, then the remainder after further boiling. Pour in a thin stream down the side of the bowl rather than onto the beaters. The recipe does not say why it is done in two stages.
- Cream of tartarIt inverts part of the sucrose as the syrup boils, which keeps the finished frosting from turning grainy in the bowl. Do not skip it, and do not stir the syrup once it is boiling — stirring throws crystals up the pan wall.
- "Beat very little"Sound advice with a hand whisk and dangerous advice with a stand mixer. Beat only until the bowl is barely warm and the meringue holds a peak; overbeaten boiled frosting breaks into a dry, curdy mass that will not spread.
- The glaze is the cue"slightly glazed" means the surface has stopped looking wet and dulls to a faint satin. Spread promptly, as boiled frosting crusts as it cools.
- HumidityBoiled frosting is hygroscopic. On a damp day it weeps and never sets properly, which is why these recipes were once thought unreliable rather than the cook.
- YieldA batch on the scale suggested above frosts one two-layer 8- or 9-inch cake, or about 24 cupcakes.
Boiled or "fluffy" frosting was the American church-supper answer to buttercream, and it appears often in community cookbooks from the 1880s through the 1930s, plausibly because sugar, water and eggs were more affordable than enough good butter to fill a cake. Hot syrup beaten into egg whites gives a glossy, marshmallowy coating that holds up on a covered plate in a warm parish hall far better than a butter icing would her call Italian meringue. The stray half-cup of maple sugar at the foot of the entry is a fossil of how these books were assembled: recipes were gathered from many contributors and set in type at speed, and ingredient lines regularly wandered from one recipe into the next. Mrs. Johnson may well have meant it for this frosting or for the recipe printed alongside it.