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Icing, Sugar, for Cakes
INGREDIENTS. To every lb. of loaf sugar allow the whites of 4 eggs, 1 oz. of fine starch.
Beat the eggs to a strong froth, and gradually sift in the sugar, which should be reduced to the finest possible powder, and gradually add the starch, also finely powdered. Beat the mixture well until the sugar is smooth; then with a spoon or broad knife lay the ice equally over the cakes. These should then be placed in a very cool oven, and the icing allowed to dry and harden, but not to colour. The INDIAN CHUTNEY SAUCE. icing may be coloured with strawberry or currant juice, or with prepared cochineal.
If it be put on the cakes as soon as they are withdrawn from the oven, it will be come firm and hard by the time the cakes are cold. On very rich cakes, such as wedding, christening cakes, &c., a layer of almond icing is usually spread over the top, and over that the white icing as described. All iced cakes should be kept in a very dry place.
This is royal icing in its Victorian form — beaten egg white, powdered sugar and a little starch, dried rather than baked. The printed page has picked up stray lines from neighbouring entries ("sugar and water, in a lined saucepan over a", "INDIAN CHUTNEY SAUCE", "DECORATIONS FOR ICED CAKES"); ignore them, the method begins at "Beat the eggs to a strong froth".
- The hinge: add the sugar slowlySift the sugar into the beaten whites gradually and beat until the mixture is completely smooth before it goes near the cake. Tipped in all at once it is much harder to work smooth and tends to stay grainy.
- Loaf sugarSugar was sold as a hard cone to be broken and pounded, which is why the recipe insists on "the finest possible powder". Use sifted confectioners'/icing sugar instead — about 3 3/4 cups to the pound. Note that modern icing sugar already contains cornstarch.
- Fine starch1 oz is roughly 3 tablespoons of cornstarch or arrowroot, finely sifted. It helps the icing set matte and hard. If you are using commercial icing sugar, halve it or leave it out.
- Egg whitesFour whites to a pound of sugar gives a fairly soft, spreadable ice rather than a piping consistency. Because nothing here cooks the egg, use pasteurized whites or meringue powder if the cake will be served to children, the elderly, or anyone pregnant.
- "A very cool oven"The book gives no figure; a modern equivalent is roughly 200-225F with the door ajar, for 30-60 minutes, or simply leave the cake in a dry room overnight. The aim is to drive off moisture without browning, so keep the heat low enough that the white does not colour.
- Icing a warm cakeThe alternative given — spreading the ice on cakes straight from the oven — works because the cake's residual heat dries the surface. It also makes the icing set fast, so work quickly and in one pass.
- Colourings"Prepared cochineal" was a ready-made liquid colouring from the cochineal insect; cochineal/carmine is still sold as a natural red. Strawberry or currant juice will slacken the icing noticeably; compensate with extra sifted sugar rather than more egg.
- Almond icingThe under-layer on wedding and christening cakes is marzipan. Let it dry a day before the white icing goes on, or oil from the almonds will stain through.
- Yield and storageOne pound of sugar makes roughly enough to coat the top and sides of a single 8-9 inch cake. Keep the bowl covered with a damp cloth while you work — it crusts quickly — and store the finished cake somewhere genuinely dry, as humidity softens hard icing back to tackiness.
Royal icing is often said to take its name from its use on grand ceremonial cakes rather than from any single royal occasion, though the origin is not documented; the association is generally traced to the elaborate white-iced tiers of nineteenth-century British wedding cakes. The technique depends on refined sugar being available cheaply enough to use by the pound, which by Mrs Beeton's day it was: cane sugar from the West Indies had brought the price down from the luxury it had been a century earlier. The instruction to pound loaf sugar "to the finest possible powder" is a reminder that the cook was expected to make her own with a mortar and a sieve. The two-layer scheme described here, marzipan beneath and hard white above, is still the standard construction of a traditional British fruit wedding cake, and one of the reasons such cakes keep for months, along with the fruit and alcohol: the almond paste seals the crumb and the dried sugar shell seals the almond paste.