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Chocolate Frosting
1 square chocolate 3 tablespoons sugar 1 tablespoon water 1 egg-white 8 tablespoons confectioners' sugar 1/2 tablespoon vanilla Cook the chocolate, sugar and water together, stirring until the mixture is smooth and glossy. Beat the white of the egg enough to thin it, but not to make it frothy; add the sugar, stir until smooth and light, then add the chocolate mixture and vanilla. Cool before spreading on the cake.
A one-ounce chocolate frosting of the uncooked type, thickened with raw egg white rather than by boiling. The chocolate step is brief and the egg is never heated, which is where the recipe fails by current standards.
- The raw egg whiteThe white is beaten only enough to thin it and is then bound with confectioners' sugar and a small quantity of chocolate. Nothing in the method brings the egg to a pasteurizing temperature, and the frosting is deliberately cooled before spreading, so it is eaten raw. Uncooked shell egg carries a Salmonella risk that this recipe does nothing to address; use a current frosting recipe instead.
- Why the hot chocolate does not helpOne square of chocolate with 3 tablespoons sugar and 1 tablespoon water makes only a small quantity of hot paste, and it is added to the sugared white rather than cooked with it. There is too little heat, held for too short a time, to do anything to the egg.
- One square of chocolateA square is one ounce of baking chocolate, and the sugar in the recipe indicates the unsweetened kind. Modern baking bars are still usually scored into one-ounce portions, but supermarket "semi-sweet" bars are not the same thing and would throw the sugar balance well off.
- Confectioners' sugar then and nowConfectioners' sugar of this period was not standardised as today's 10X is, and period recipes often direct that it be sieved. Eight tablespoons is half a cup, roughly 2 ounces by weight.
- YieldThe quantities here are small; the recipe gives no pan size, so the amount of cake it will cover is a matter of judgement.