Fig Filling
1/2 pound chopped figs 2 tablespoons sugar Planned for 3 tablespoons boiling water 1 tablespoon lemon juice Cook all the ingredients together in a double boiler until thick enough to spread without running off the cake. Have the cake cold and the filling hot.
Whites of 3 eggs 1/2 cup sugar
A simple cooked fruit filling for layer cake, printed with the confusion typical of a loose-leaf book: the last two lines belong to a separate frosting and have drifted into this card.
- The stray ingredients"Whites of 3 eggs" and "1/2 cup sugar" have no instructions attached and are not part of the fig mixture. They appear to be the start of a separate frosting, but no method is given here; use a current meringue frosting recipe if you want one.
- "Planned for"An unexplained artifact in the printed text; nothing survives here to show what it referred to. Read the ingredient list as: 1/2 lb chopped figs, 2 tablespoons sugar, 3 tablespoons boiling water, 1 tablespoon lemon juice.
- Figs to useDried figs, chopped fine; 1/2 pound is about 1 1/2 cups packed. Stem them first, since the hard stem tips will not soften. Mission figs give a darker, jammier filling than Calimyrna.
- Water is not enough as writtenThree tablespoons of water will barely wet a half pound of dried fruit. Expect to add water a tablespoon at a time until the mass is spreadable rather than pasty.
- The double boilerIt exists here to keep a sugary fruit paste from scorching, which it will do readily over direct heat. Reckon on 20 to 30 minutes with the water at a bare simmer, stirring and mashing as the figs break down.
- Hot filling, cold cakeThis is the hinge of the instruction. Hot filling spreads thinly and sets as it cools, gripping the crumb; the cake must be fully cool or it will tear and the filling will soak in and slide.
- YieldEnough to fill one two-layer 8- or 9-inch cake. It will keep several days refrigerated and can be reheated gently to spreading consistency.
Cooked dried-fruit fillings were a common alternative to jam or custard between cake layers in American kitchens of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and fig, date and raisin versions appear in cookbooks of the period with broadly similar proportions: fruit, a little sugar, boiling water, and acid from lemon. The lemon juice is doing more than flavoring, since figs are low in acid and the juice brightens what would otherwise taste flat and cloying. Dried figs were imported in quantity from Smyrna and were increasingly grown commercially in California. Loose-leaf cookbooks were sold as binders so a cook could add, remove and reorder pages.