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Frozen Orange Cake
1 teaspoon corn starch 1/2 cup sugar 1 cup scalded milk 3 egg yolks 1 tablespoon butter 1 orange (rind and juice) rind of lemon 3 egg whites, beaten stiff lady fingers 1 cup cream, whipped 4 tablespoons sugar orange sections Mix cornstarch and sugar. Pour on gradually the hot milk and cook until clear stirring constantly. Beat the egg yolks slightly and add the hot mixture slowly. Cook in double boiler stirring frequently. Add the butter, orange juice and grated orange and lemon rind. Fold in the egg whites. Cool. Use a cake pan with removable bottom. Line sides and bottom with lady fingers, separated with the rounded side toward pan. Spread a layer of filling over lady fingers. Repeat until ingredients are used up. Chill for 24 hours. Lift the bottom out with the cake and place on large plate. Cover top with sweetened, flavored cream. Arrange sections of orange on top. Serves 12.
This is an icebox charlotte built on a stirred custard, and the assembly is sound period technique — but the meringue step puts uncooked egg white into a dessert that is never heated again.
- The raw whites are the problemThree stiffly beaten whites are folded into a custard that has already come off the heat, and the finished cake is then chilled rather than baked or cooked. The whites are diluted through a large volume of custard and cannot be relied on to reach a temperature that would inactivate Salmonella; the folding is deliberately gentle, so even the residual heat of the base is not distributed reliably.
- Twenty-four hours of holdingA sugared, milk-and-egg mixture standing a full day gives any contamination present a long window. Domestic cooling of the period is likely to have been warmer and less steady than a modern refrigerator, and the recipe gives no temperature at all. If you want a dessert of this kind, use a current recipe built on pasteurised whites or an eggless whipped base.
- The custard base itselfThe yolk portion is cooked properly — tempered with hot milk, then finished in a double boiler — so the fault is not in the technique but in what is added afterwards. This is worth noting because the recipe reads as safe at a glance.
- "Frozen" is a misnomer hereNothing in the method freezes; the instruction is simply to chill for 24 hours.
- Ladyfingers and the panThe sponge-finger biscuits are separated from one another and stood around the sides and bottom of a springform or loose-bottomed tin, rounded face toward the pan, so the cake unmoulds with a smooth ribbed shell. Ladyfingers sold today are usually the dry Italian savoiardi, which are firmer and drier than a soft fresh sponge finger.
- The second sugar measureThe four tablespoons of sugar belong to the whipped cream topping, not to the custard; the half cup at the head of the list goes with the cornstarch. The "flavored" cream is left to the cook, and would ordinarily have meant vanilla or a little more orange.