Fruit Filling
Whites of 3 eggs 1/2 cup sugar 4 tablespoons chopped citron Beat the whites to a stiff froth; add the sugar gradually, then the fruit and nuts. 4 tablespoons chopped raisins 1/2 cup chopped almonds 12 1/4 pound chopped figs
This is a filling for a layer cake, and the page has come down to us badly scrambled: the loose-leaf format has jumbled the ingredient column into the method, and two key quantities are missing outright. The larger problem is that nothing here is ever cooked.
- Raw egg white, never heatedThe whites are beaten, sweetened and spread between cake layers with no cooking of any kind, and the finished cake is not baked again. Uncooked egg white carries a Salmonella risk and there is no step in this recipe that brings it anywhere near a safe temperature. Contemporary layer-cake fillings of this type are made as a boiled or Swiss-style meringue, where a hot syrup or a bain-marie takes the whites well past that point; use a current recipe if you want this effect.
- No egg count and no sugar quantity"Beat the whites" gives no number, and "add the sugar gradually" gives no weight. Some comparable fillings of the period run to roughly two whites to a cup of confectioners' sugar, but that is an inference and not what the page says. The recipe cannot be reconstructed with confidence.
- The garbled figs line"12 1/4 pound chopped figs" is a typesetting collision. Almost certainly a stray figure has drifted in from an adjacent line and the intended amount is 1/4 pound of chopped figs, about 4 oz.
- CitronCandied citron, the thick peel of Citrus medica, sold in bricks or diced tubs alongside glacé cherries and mixed peel at holiday time. It is not lemon zest and it is not the modern soft drink; candied mixed peel is the nearest common substitute.
- AlmondsThe recipe says only "chopped almonds": sweet almonds cut by hand rather than ground. They were likely blanched, skinned at home in hot water; supermarket blanched slivered almonds are the same nut already peeled.
- Where the sugar goesNote the order in the original: sugar into the beaten whites first, fruit and nuts last. Fruit and fat-rich nuts folded in early will deflate a meringue, which may be why the sequence is given.
Mrs. Fryer's book belongs to the loose-leaf era of American cookery publishing, when volumes were sold as ring-bound or perforated sheets so a housekeeper could add her own cards and clippings. On this page the ingredient column and the method have ended up interleaved, whatever the cause. Citron, raisins, figs and almonds are all shelf-stable goods that would have been bought by the pound and chopped at home. Binding them in beaten egg white rather than butter or cooked custard made for a quick filling between plain white cake layers. An uncooked white is the reason the recipe does not survive review now.