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Quick White Mountain Frosting
7/8 cup granulated sugar white of egg 3 tbsp. water Put ingredients in dish over boiling water (keeping water boiling), and beat with dover egg beater 7 minutes, add flavoring.
— Mrs. Hiram B. Gibbs
This is a seven-minute frosting, the quick cousin of boiled icing: instead of cooking a sugar syrup to the thread stage and pouring it onto beaten whites, you beat everything together over simmering water until the sugar dissolves and the meringue sets up.
- The hinge: keep the water boiling, keep the bowl off itThe whole method depends on steady heat transferring through the bowl while you beat without pause. Set a metal or heatproof bowl over a pan of boiling water so the base does not touch the water, and do not stop beating, or the whites will scramble at the edges.
- 7/8 cup sugarThat is 14 tablespoons, about 6 oz or 175 g.
- White of eggOne white is meant; a modern large white, about 30 g, is a reasonable stand-in.
- Dover egg beaterA rotary hand beater, the standard tool of the period. A hand mixer on medium-high does the same work, and the meringue may come to soft peaks before the full 7 minutes.
- DonenessJudge by the frosting, not the clock. It is ready when it is glossy, holds a peak that just bends at the tip, and feels no longer gritty between finger and thumb. A thermometer in the mixture should read about 160F.
- FlavoringHalf a teaspoon of vanilla, added off the heat at the end so it does not steam away. A drop of lemon juice or a pinch of cream of tartar beaten in at the start makes the meringue more stable, though the original does not call for it.
- Yield and spreadingEnough to cover the top and sides of one 8-inch layer, or the top of an 8-inch square cake. Spread it the moment it comes off the heat; it crusts fast and tears if worked twice.
- WeatherOn a humid day this frosting stays tacky and may slump. It is at its best made and served the same day, and it does not refrigerate well.
"White Mountain" frosting takes its name, by a derivation often repeated though never firmly documented, from snow-capped peaks; the phrase became a familiar heading in American cake chapters for a stiff white icing peaked up in drifts. The older White Mountain method cooked sugar and water to a syrup and beat it into stiff whites; the "quick" version here collapses those steps into a single bowl over boiling water, which is why it is also known as seven-minute frosting. Its spread through home kitchens owed a good deal to the cheap rotary egg beater, and sustaining a meringue by hand with a whisk for seven minutes over steam is punishing work. That the recipe arrives credited to Mrs. Hiram B. Gibbs is typical of the church-society compilations of the period, whose cookbooks were fundraisers assembled from members' own kitchen cards, signatures and all. Read next Chocolate Cake Inexpensive Chocolate Cake Lemon Cake Coffee Cake Graham Bread ← Peachy Filling Boiled Frosting → About Historical Disclaimer Terms