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Cakes (If two eggs are used instead)
If two eggs are used instead of one the mixture will not harden so quickly and will be more easily spread.
CHOCOLATE FROSTING No. 1 Make a boiled frosting, adding one square of unsweetened chocolate, grated, to the beaten egg. The chocolate will melt when the hot syrup is poured on.
CHOCOLATE FROSTING No. 2 2 tablespoons melted chocolate 5 tablespoons powdered sugar 3 tablespoons boiling water Cook over the fire until smooth and glossy, and use at once. This icing is to be used for éclairs or small cakes.
Two chocolate icings and a note carried over from the preceding boiled-frosting recipe. The second is a quick glacé icing of the sort still brushed over éclairs.
- The opening lineIt appears to be the tail of the boiled frosting recipe on the page before, which the text implies used one egg. A second egg gives more foam for the same syrup, so the icing would stay soft and spreadable longer instead of setting under the spatula.
- "A square" of chocolateBaking chocolate was sold in scored cakes of one-ounce squares, and that is what is meant: 1 oz unsweetened chocolate. Modern bars are often 4 oz total, so weigh rather than count squares.
- Grating the chocolateThe recipe specifies it. Grated chocolate melts readily in the hot syrup and disperses; larger pieces are slower to melt and may not blend in evenly.
- Boiled frosting, in shortAn Italian meringue in method: sugar syrup cooked to the soft-ball stage (roughly 234-240F, though the book gives no figure) poured in a thin stream onto stiffly beaten egg and beaten until it holds shape. The syrup stage is what governs the result.
- Raw whiteThe hot syrup warms the white but does not reliably pasteurise it. If you are serving anyone frail, elderly or pregnant, use pasteurised whites or carton egg white.
- "Melted chocolate" in No. 2Two tablespoons of melted chocolate is somewhere around 1 to 1 1/2 oz by weight. If unsweetened chocolate is meant, 5 tablespoons of sugar will leave it markedly bitter; a semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate gives the glossy eclair coating most readers expect.
- "Cook over the fire"A low direct flame, stirring constantly, or a bowl over simmering water if you are cautious. You are dissolving the sugar and bringing the mixture to a smooth gloss, not boiling it down; overcooked, it turns dull and grainy.
- Use at oncePowdered sugar today contains a little cornstarch, which may make the cooked icing thicken and skin over as it cools. Have the eclairs cooled and lined up before you start, and dip or spread immediately.
- YieldNo. 2 is a small quantity, on the order of half a cup of ingredients before cooking; enough for a few eclairs or small cakes only. Scale it up rather than trying to stretch it thin.
Boiled frosting was a common American cake covering of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, made by testing a syrup dropped into cold water or, later, with a thermometer. The abrupt opening line shows the page begins mid-recipe, the previous recipe having run over. The two chocolate versions show the division of labour in a period cake chapter: a meringue-based frosting for layer cakes, where volume and a soft body matter, and a thin cooked glace for eclairs and small cakes, where what is wanted is a hard, shining shell. Unsweetened chocolate sold in scored one-ounce squares was a standard baking form by then, and recipe writers commonly counted squares rather than weighing.