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Brown Sugar Frosting
1 cup brown sugar cup water 2 egg whites 1 tablespoon lemon juice 1 teaspoon vanilla Make the same as Boiled Frosting.
Marshmallow Frosting No. 2
This is a one-line variation entry: it borrows the method from the book's Boiled Frosting, which means a hot sugar syrup beaten into stiff egg whites — what a modern cook would call an Italian meringue. Almost everything that can go wrong here happens in the syrup.
- The missing measurementThe water quantity has dropped out of the text; it reads only "cup water." Boiled frostings of this period run from a quarter to a half cup of water per cup of sugar. The exact figure matters less than it looks, since the water boils off, but do not guess high with a very wet syrup or you will be at the stove a long while.
- The hinge: syrup temperatureCook the sugar and water without stirring to the soft-ball stage, 238-240F. Below that the frosting stays soupy and never sets; above about 245F it turns grainy and hard as it cools. A thermometer removes all doubt.
- Brown sugar behaves differentlyMolasses in brown sugar makes the syrup foam higher and scorch more readily than white. Use a saucepan at least three times the volume of the syrup, and keep the heat moderate once it starts to climb.
- Pouring inBeat the whites to firm peaks first, then add the syrup in a thin steady stream down the side of the bowl with the mixer running. Dumped in at once, the syrup cooks the whites into threads.
- Lemon juice and vanilla go in lastAcid inhibits crystallization only while it is cooking in the syrup; added at the end, as here, the lemon juice is there for flavour and to cut the sweetness. Add both flavourings after the syrup is fully incorporated and the meringue has cooled to warm, since vanilla's aroma largely evaporates off boiling syrup.
- Egg whites and heatHot syrup raises the whites well above room temperature but does not reliably pasteurize them. If serving to anyone very young, pregnant, elderly or immunocompromised, use pasteurized whites.
- WeatherBoiled frostings are humidity-sensitive. On a damp day the finished frosting stays tacky and weeps; if you can, make it in dry conditions and serve the cake the same day.
- YieldRoughly two to two and a half cups of frosting, enough to fill and cover an 8-inch two-layer cake, though thinly. It sets with a thin crisp shell over a marshmallowy interior and does not keep well refrigerated.
Lowney's Cook Book was compiled by Maria Willett Howard and issued by the Walter M. Lowney Company, the Boston chocolate manufacturer — one of the many turn-of-the-century cookbooks published by a food firm to keep its product in the kitchen. Its dessert chapter accordingly runs long, and boiled frosting appears in a whole family of one-line variations built on a single base method, each swapping the sweetener or the flavoring: this brown sugar version, a maple one, marshmallow, and so on. Boiled frosting itself belongs to the era when candy thermometers were still uncommon and cooks judged syrup by dropping a bead into cold water; the technique is the same Italian meringue used in confectionery, borrowed for the cake table. A brown sugar boiled frosting of this kind is often called sea foam frosting in later American books, though Lowney's does not use the name.