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Nougat Filling
+ cup cream 1 cup chopped nut meats + cup powdered sugar Beat egg; add powdered sugar, beaten cream and nut meats; add mixture to Boiled Frosting. Beat until thick enough to spread. 1 cup raisins 1 cup chopped nuts 1 egg white
A nut filling built on boiled frosting, meant to be spread between cake layers rather than eaten on its own. The proportions as printed need judgment, since the fractions for the cream and sugar have not survived legibly.
- The missing fractionsBoth the cream and the powdered sugar are given as a fraction of a cup that cannot be read with certainty. A quarter to a half cup of each is consistent with the way similar fillings are built in this period; start at a quarter cup and add more sugar only if the filling slumps.
- Powdered sugarSift it before beating in so the filling does not go grainy. Note that in period American usage 'powdered sugar' was not always identical to what is now sold as confectioners' or icing sugar (which contains a little starch); the finer confectioners' grade was frequently listed as a separate item.
- Boiled frosting is the baseThis is not a standalone filling. It depends on the book's Boiled Frosting, hot sugar syrup beaten into egg white; the nut mixture is added to that. Combining will be easiest while the frosting is still warm and workable, though the recipe does not say so.
- Beaten cream'Beaten cream' most likely means whipped cream, though the book does not say how stiff. The printed method directs beating the mixture until thick enough to spread, so folding it in gently is a modern preference rather than what is written.
- Nut meatsAlmonds or walnuts both suit a nougat filling. Toast and cool them first; warm nuts will thin the frosting, and untoasted nuts taste flat against the sweetness.
- The egg whiteThe egg -- The method says only 'Beat egg,' while the trailing '1 cup raisins, 1 cup chopped nuts, 1 egg white' appears to belong to a neighbouring recipe on the page, so which egg is meant is uncertain. Either way the egg goes in raw and is not brought to a cooking temperature; use pasteurized egg if the cake is for children, the elderly, or anyone pregnant.
- ConsistencyBeat only until the filling holds a soft ridge. Overbeaten boiled frosting turns chalky and tears the cake surface when spread.
- YieldThe book gives no yield; with a cup of nuts it will run to roughly enough for a filled two-layer cake, depending on the size of the Boiled Frosting batch. Use it the day it is made; boiled frosting weeps and crusts overnight.
Nougat in the French sense is a confection of boiled sugar or honey, whipped egg white and nuts, and many American cookbooks of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries applied the name to nut-and-egg-white cake fillings that echoed it. This book was issued by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, and it treats cake fillings and frostings as a family of variations on a few base recipes, so a page like this assumes you have already turned to Boiled Frosting. Boiled frosting depended on judging the syrup, usually by the thread or soft-ball test rather than by a thermometer, and it gave the glossy white finish common on layer cakes before butter-based American buttercream became usual.