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Ice Box Cake (Mrs A W Lindroth C powdered)
Mrs. A. W. Lindroth. 1 C powdered sugar 1/2 C butter 1 cake German sweet chocolate 4 eggs 2 doz. lady fingers Melt chocolate in double boiler; add butter and powdered sugar; beat for 15 minutes. Then add each egg separately and beat for 5 minutes after adding each egg. Line pan with lady fingers. Pour on layer of chocolate mixture, then layer of lady fingers, and so on, until pan is filled. Must have layer of lady fingers on top. Put a plate over the top and let stand over night. Serve with whipped cream.
This is an uncooked egg confection: four raw eggs are beaten into melted chocolate and butter, then chilled overnight and served. Nothing in the method brings the eggs anywhere near a safe temperature, and the notes below explain the problem rather than work around it.
- The eggs are never cookedChocolate melted in a double boiler is warm, not hot, and by the time butter and a cup of sugar are beaten in it is close to room temperature. Adding raw eggs to that mixture and holding it overnight is a Salmonella risk with no kill step at any point.
- Overnight at what temperatureThe recipe says only "let stand over night" with a plate on top; it never specifies a chilled cabinet or a temperature. On a counter that means hours in the danger zone, and even in a cooled icebox the eggs are never pasteurised — refrigeration only slows growth.
- Who is most at riskUncooked-egg desserts are specifically contraindicated for young children, older adults, pregnant people and anyone immunocompromised. If you want a chocolate icebox cake, use a current recipe built on pasteurised eggs or a cooked custard base.
- "1 cake German sweet chocolate"Not chocolate from Germany — the name comes from the Baker's product developed by Samuel German, a dark sweet chocolate. The modern bar is 4 ounces; the recipe gives no weight, so treat the quantity as approximate. It is sweeter than semisweet.
- C means cup"C" here is a cup measure. "Powdered sugar" in books of this kind usually means what we now call confectioners' sugar, though the term was also used for finely granulated sugar; the fine grain dissolves readily in the butter without graininess.
- The 15 and 5 minute beatingThose long times suggest hand beating or a slow-geared mixer, and the likely aim is aeration and full dissolution of the sugar rather than any kind of cooking. No amount of beating makes a raw egg safe.
- YieldThe recipe specifies only "pan" and gives no yield; two dozen lady fingers layered in a small loaf-sized pan would serve a modest number, sliced across.
Icebox cakes belong to the first decades of domestic mechanical refrigeration, when a household that owned a chilled cabinet wanted recipes that showed it off. The formula is always the same: a commercial biscuit — lady fingers, vanilla wafers, graham crackers — softened overnight by a rich uncooked filling until the whole thing slices like cake without ever seeing an oven. Manufacturers pushed the idea hard; the Nabisco wafer roll and, by most accounts, the Baker's chocolate versions were printed on packages and reprinted, with local variations, in community cookbooks across the country. This one carries a contributor's name, as church-collection recipes often do, and its reliance on a branded chocolate bar and bought lady fingers is characteristic of the genre: minimal technique, no baking, and a dessert that could be assembled the night before a supper and forgotten until it was needed. Raw-egg fillings were routine then and are the one part of the tradition that has not survived scrutiny.