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Ice Box Cake (C fresh butter C sifted)
2/3 C fresh butter 1¼ C sifted powered sugar 3 eggs 1 C toasted cocoanut ½ pt. heavy cream, whipped Grated rind 1 large lemon 1 T lemon juice 2 doz. lady fingers Line a mold with wax paper. Split, trim and cut lady fingers to fit mold, using them to line both bottom and sides, remembering that the round end must be put down in the mold as this will be the top when it is inverted. Cream butter, adding sugar gradually. Beat and add egg yolks, cocoanut, lemon rind and juice. Fold in whipped cream and egg whites beaten until stiff. Turn half of mixture into previously prepared mold, imbed in it a layer of lady fingers, cover with remaining filling and top with more lady fingers. Place in refrigerator for 24 hours, unmold, lift off the paper and serve, garnished with slightly sweetened whipped cream and marachino cherries. Serves eight.
This is a classic uncooked icebox cake, and that is exactly the problem: the filling is set with raw egg and then held at refrigerator temperature for a full day, with no cooking step anywhere. Read it as a period document rather than a working recipe.
- Raw egg, never heatedThree eggs go in raw — yolks beaten into the butter and sugar, whites folded in stiff — and nothing in the method brings any part of the cake above refrigerator temperature. Salmonella in eggs is a hazard that was not understood when this was written, and no amount of chilling reduces it. A current recipe using pasteurized eggs or a cooked custard base should be used instead.
- The 24-hour holdA soft butter-cream-egg mixture sitting for a day gives any bacteria present a long window, and early domestic refrigerators generally ran warmer and less evenly than modern ones. The long rest is also what softens the lady fingers into cake, so it cannot simply be shortened.
- The sugar quantityThe printed page was checked: the recipe calls for 1¼ cups sifted powdered sugar, which is what our text now gives.
- What the vessel meansA "mold" here is any straight-sided loaf pan or charlotte mold, lined with waxed paper so the cake will turn out; the filling as written is bulky, so the vessel needs to be a generous one. Parchment is the modern equivalent; plastic wrap works but wrinkles.
- Lady fingers and cocoanutTwo dozen lady fingers is one to two commercial packages depending on brand and whether they are the crisp Italian savoiardi or the soft sponge kind; count them rather than trusting the box. "Cocoanut" is the older spelling; toasted means dried unsweetened shred, browned in a dry pan or a moderate oven until fragrant, not the sweetened bagged flake.
- Heavy cream1½ pints is 3 cups, which whips to about 6 cups — the bulk of the dessert is whipped cream. Cream sold as "heavy" was broadly comparable in richness to today's heavy whipping cream.
- YieldThe original gives eight servings; these are rich, and small slices are the intent.
Icebox cakes belong to a specific moment: the years when mechanical refrigeration reached ordinary American kitchens and cooks discovered they could build a dessert that set by cold alone, with no oven and no gelatin. Lady fingers lining a mold recalls the French charlotte russe, stripped of its cooked bavarian cream and rebuilt around whipped cream, creamed butter and raw egg — faster, cheaper, and possible for anyone with a refrigerator and a loaf pan. Recipes of this shape spread through the 1920s and 1930s in newspaper food columns and manufacturers' pamphlets, and from there into community and fundraising cookbooks, where a dessert that could be made the day before and unmolded at the last minute was worth its page.