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Seven--Minute Frosting
2 unbeaten egg whites 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar 5 tablespoons hot water 1/4 teaspoon cream tartar 1 teaspoon vanilla Put all in double boiler except vanilla, cook for 7 minutes over hot water, beating with egg--beater continually. Flavor and spread.
A standard boiled-style meringue frosting, and one of the few old cake icings that needs almost no translation. The only real variables are the water beneath the bowl and the stamina of the beating.
- The hinge: keep beatingThe whites must be in constant motion from the moment they meet the heat, or they will set into cooked flecks of egg white that never smooth out. An electric hand mixer on medium-high does the whole seven minutes without complaint.
- Water hot, not boiling hard"Over hot water" means simmering water that does not touch the upper pan. A hard boil drives the bowl above the temperature the whites want and gives a grainy, weeping frosting.
- Cream tartarThis is cream of tartar, the same powdered potassium bitartrate sold today. It keeps the sugar from crystallizing and stabilizes the foam; do not leave it out.
- When it is doneSeven minutes is a guide, not a law. Stop when the frosting holds a firm peak that stands upright on the lifted beater and the mixture has greatly increased in volume. On a humid day it may want nine or ten minutes.
- Egg safety, in passingHeld over simmering water and beaten for seven minutes, the whites are cooked rather than raw, and the mixture usually comes to somewhere around 160F. Because the recipe times by the clock and not by temperature, check with a thermometer if you are serving anyone vulnerable.
- Vanilla lastOff the heat, as directed. Added early, much of the flavor simply steams away.
- Yield and spreadingEnough to fill and frost a two-layer 8- or 9-inch cake, or about two dozen cupcakes. Spread while barely warm, using the back of a spoon to swirl; it crusts within an hour and will not move after that.
- KeepingIt does not refrigerate well, going weepy and slumped within a day. Frost the cake the day it will be eaten.
Seven-minute frosting was the compromise between the old boiled icing, which required a sugar syrup taken to the soft-ball stage and a candy thermometer or a practiced hand, and plain uncooked meringue, which would not hold up on a cake. Cooking the whites, sugar and water together over hot water let any cook reach a stable glossy icing by the clock alone, and it spread through American cookbooks and manufacturers' pamphlets in the early twentieth century. It is showy, cheap in ingredients, and firm enough to slice cleanly.