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Date and Almond Filling
1 cup sugar cup thin cream 2 egg whites 1 cup chopped dates cup chopped almonds Boil sugar and cream until it threads. Pour on to the whites of eggs; add chopped dates and almonds. Cool and use for filling.
This is a boiled-syrup meringue filling of the type that filled layer cakes before butter frostings took over. The original printing has lost at least two fractions, so read the ingredient list with care.
- Missing fractions"cup thin cream" and "cup chopped almonds" have lost their fractions in this printing. Half a cup of each is the most likely reading, though a quarter or a third is possible. A full cup of cream to a cup of sugar would take a very long time to reach thread stage and give a slack filling, so treat the quantities as ambiguous and start with half a cup of each.
- Thin creamEarly twentieth-century "thin cream" was generally reckoned at around 18 percent butterfat, closest to today's light cream; half-and-half will serve at a pinch. Heavy cream will work but makes a richer, softer filling.
- ThreadsThe thread stage is 230-235F on a candy thermometer: a spoon lifted from the syrup trails a fine thread a couple of inches long. Milk solids in the cream scorch easily, so use a heavy pan and stir until the sugar dissolves, then leave it alone.
- Beat the whites firstThe recipe does not say so, but the whites must already be beaten to soft peaks before the syrup goes in. Pour it in a thin steady stream down the side of the bowl while beating, or the hot syrup will set in lumps.
- Egg safetySyrup at thread stage does not reliably bring the whites to a pasteurizing temperature, and the filling is never cooked afterwards. Use pasteurized egg whites if you are serving anyone elderly, pregnant, very young or immune-compromised.
- DatesDates of this period were commonly sold with the stones in and needed pitting; supermarket Medjool or Deglet Noor are usually sold pitted. Chop them fine and toss with a spoonful of the sugar so they do not clump into a single mass when folded in.
- AlmondsPeriod recipes often specify blanched almonds, though this one does not. Chop them coarsely and toast them lightly for flavour.
- Cooling and useFold in the fruit and nuts, then let the mixture cool to room temperature before spreading, otherwise it soaks into the cake. It stiffens as it cools and does not keep well, so make it the day it is used.
- YieldRoughly enough to fill a two-layer eight- or nine-inch cake.
Lowney's Cook Book was issued by the Walter M. Lowney Company, the Boston chocolate manufacturer, and it surrounded its house product with a full range of general household recipes. Fillings of this kind, sugar syrup boiled to a thread and beaten into egg whites, were the standard finish for American layer cakes before creamed butter icings became common, and the same base appears under names like boiled frosting and white mountain cream depending on the book. Dates and almonds mark this as a slightly luxurious version: dried dates were imported in quantity from the Persian Gulf and North Africa by the turn of the century and had become an inexpensive, widely available sweet fruit in American grocers, while almonds carried a lingering association with fine confectionery. The result belongs to a family of cake fillings that used cheap sugar and beaten egg to stretch a small amount of costly fruit and nut across two layers of cake.