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Nougat Frosting
1 cup chopped almonds 4 tablespoons sugar 1 cup sugar cup boiling water 2 egg whites Brown almonds in oven. Caramelize four tablespoons sugar, add almonds, cool, and pound. Boil sugar and water until it threads, add almond powder, pour on to the beaten whites, and beat until thick enough to spread.
This is a boiled (Italian meringue) frosting carrying a homemade praline powder. The work is in the timing, since the caramelized almonds must go into the syrup and onto the whites while everything is still hot and pourable.
- The missing water measureThe original reads "cup boiling water," the fraction apparently lost in printing. Boiled frosting syrups of this kind generally use somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 cup water to 1 cup sugar; extra water only lengthens the boil. Judge by the thread stage, not by volume.
- "Until it threads"Thread stage is 230-234F on a thermometer, when a drizzle from the spoon falls in a fine thread rather than in drops. Below that the frosting stays runny; much above it and you are into soft-ball territory and a stiff, crumbly icing.
- Browning the almondsA single layer on a sheet pan at 350F for 8-10 minutes, shaken once, until fragrant and just colored. They will darken further in the caramel, so stop short.
- Caramelizing the 4 tablespoonsMelt the sugar dry in a heavy pan over medium heat until it is deep amber, stir in the almonds, and turn the mass out onto an oiled sheet or parchment to set hard. This is ordinary praline.
- "Pound" the pralineA mortar was the 1907 tool; a food processor pulsed in short bursts does it in seconds. Stop at a coarse powder, since running it long turns praline into oily paste.
- The hingeHave the whites beaten to soft peaks and the almond powder ready before the syrup reaches temperature. Stir the powder into the hot syrup and pour it onto the whites in a thin steady stream at the side of the bowl, beating continuously; a pause lets the syrup set into candy.
- Egg whitesThe hot syrup warms but does not reliably pasteurize the whites. Pasteurized egg whites behave the same way here and are the sensible choice for anyone serving small children, the elderly or the immune-compromised.
- Yield and keepingThe recipe gives no yield; roughly enough to fill and cover one 8- or 9-inch two-layer cake. Spread it while warm and workable, as it crusts fairly quickly and does not keep well, so frost the day it is served.
Nougat in nineteenth-century American cookery could mean almonds bound in cooked sugar as well as the aerated white confection sold today, and this frosting is in effect a praline folded into boiled icing. Lowney's Cook Book was issued by the Walter M. Lowney Company of Boston, a chocolate manufacturer, and like other maker-sponsored cookbooks of the period it ranged well past the sponsor's product into general household cookery, including frostings for the layer cakes then standard on American tables. Boiled frostings of this sort depended on reading the syrup by eye and hand, thermometers being far from universal in home kitchens.