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Chocolate Frosting
1 egg yolk 3 tablespoons milk i Melt chocolate, add sugar and milk. Cook in a double boiler until smooth; add egg yolk and cook one minute. Spread on cake.
Whites of 2 eggs
The text as printed has lost most of its ingredient list — only the egg yolk and the milk survive with quantities, and a stray "Whites of 2 eggs" has drifted in from a neighbouring recipe. What remains is a workable method for a cooked chocolate glaze, but the proportions have to be supplied.
- The missing quantitiesChocolate and sugar are called for in the method but their amounts are gone from the page, so this cannot be followed as written. A plausible reconstruction, on the pattern of other cooked chocolate frostings, would be about 2 squares (2 oz) unsweetened chocolate and 1 cup powdered or fine granulated sugar to the 3 tablespoons milk and one yolk given here, but the original proportions are unknown.
- The stray egg whitesNothing in the method uses the whites. The line most likely belongs to the recipe printed above or below; ignore it rather than trying to fold it in.
- Chocolate then meant unsweetenedChocolate then usually meant unsweetened -- 'Chocolate' in an American baking recipe of this kind normally means unsweetened baking chocolate in squares, with no sugar and no added milk solids, though sweetened eating chocolate was also sold. Modern semisweet or milk chocolate will make the frosting sweeter and slacker in body.
- Double boiler disciplineKeep the water below a simmer and do not let the bowl touch it. Direct heat scorches melted chocolate quickly and will curdle the yolk into visible threads.
- One minute is short for an eggA single minute over water will not reliably carry a yolk to 160F. Cook and stir until the mixture visibly thickens and coats the spoon, several minutes rather than one, which is also what gives the glaze its gloss.
- Spread while warmThis is a poured or spread glaze, not a whipped buttercream. It sets firm as it cools, so get it onto a completely cooled cake at once and level it with an offset spatula before it stiffens.
- YieldWith the reconstructed proportions suggested above, roughly enough to cover the top and sides of a single 8- or 9-inch layer, or the top of a small sheet cake.
Cooked frostings like this one sit between two older traditions: the boiled sugar icings that had to be beaten to a set, and the plain confectioners' sugar glazes that needed no heat at all. Adding a yolk enriches a small amount of chocolate and sugar and gives the shine that an uncooked glaze lacks. Books titled Reliable Recipes circulated in the early twentieth century, some issued by baking powder and flour companies and assembled from contributed household recipes. The assumption throughout is a cook who already knows what a double boiler does and needs only the proportions.