Creamed Nuts
2 cups confectioner's sugar white of 1 egg 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 teaspoons cold water walnuts or other nuts Mix sugar, unbeaten white of egg, vanilla and cold water into a stiff paste. Shape into little balls, press between halved walnut or other nut meats. Stoned dates and large seeded raisins may be filled with this cream, or it may be mixed with chopped nuts, shaped into bars and cut into squares.
This is an uncooked fondant: raw egg white bound with confectioner's sugar and eaten as-is. That single fact is what rules it out, and it is worth being precise about why.
- The egg white is never heatedNothing in this recipe raises the egg above room temperature — no boiling syrup is poured in, no baking, no drying at heat. Raw shell egg white is a recognised vehicle for Salmonella Enteritidis, which can be present inside an intact, clean, undamaged egg, not merely on the shell.
- Sugar is not a kill stepA stiff sugar paste lowers water activity enough to slow bacterial growth, but it does not destroy organisms already present, and these sweets are eaten within days rather than cured over months. The candy can sit on a plate for a week and still carry whatever the egg carried.
- Who it endangersThe risk falls hardest on the people most likely to be handed a plate of candy: small children, the elderly, pregnant women and anyone immunocompromised. Where a batch is made for sharing, one bad egg reaches more than one person.
- Why the book saw no problemUncooked egg-white fondants were common in early twentieth-century candy chapters, and Enteritidis had not yet become the dominant serotype in commercial layer flocks — that shift came much later. The recipe reflects its period, not current knowledge.
- If you want the resultFor nut-stuffed dates or walnut creams, use a current recipe from a modern source. Do not scale, chill or shorten this one in the hope of making it safe.
- Reading the original"Confectioner's sugar" here is what a modern American cook buys under that name — powdered sugar, cut with a little starch. "Stoned dates" means pitted, and sold that way today; "large seeded raisins" are large raisins, usually Muscats, that have had the seeds removed, which is harder to buy ready-prepared now.
Creamed nuts belong to the vogue for home candy-making that ran from the 1880s through the 1920s, when chocolate work was still beyond most kitchens but fondant, fudge, penuche and stuffed dates were within reach of anyone with a bowl and a bag of powdered sugar. Cookbooks of the period, including promotional volumes published by flour, baking powder and starch companies, often closed with a candy chapter. The technique on show is the simplest form of what confectioners call uncooked or "cold" fondant: egg white supplies just enough moisture and body to bind powdered sugar into a workable paste without the thermometer and the careful cooling that boiled fondant demands. The same paste, tinted and flavoured, served for peppermint creams and stuffed fruit as well.