Fairy Butter
The yolks of 4 hard boiled eggs. 1 teacupful of the best butter. 3 heaping tablespoonfuls powdered sugar. 1 teaspoonful orange flower water. Either grate the yolks or pound and rub them smooth in a bowl, mix the softened butter with them and the sugar and flavoring. Set the mixture where it will get cold, and afterward rub it through a sieve. It looks something like vermicelli.
Pile the fairy butter lightly in the middle of a cake dish, cut the snow cake in slices and lay around. They are to be eaten together like bread and butter.
A cold sweetened butter pressed into threads and served like a spread alongside plain cake. The whole effect depends on the texture, so the sieving stage is the one to get right.
- The hinge: temperature at sievingThe mixture must be cold and firm but not rock-hard, or it will either smear through the sieve as paste or crumble. The recipe says only to set it where it will get cold; chill until it holds a shape under a fingertip, then press it through immediately and do not touch the threads afterward.
- What to press it throughA coarse wire sieve, a food mill, or a potato ricer all give the vermicelli threads the recipe describes. Press straight down onto the serving dish so the strands fall in a loose heap rather than being scraped off and packed.
- A teacupful of butterNineteenth-century teacups ran from about 1/2 to 3/4 cup, so this is genuinely ambiguous: 4 to 6 oz of butter. Start at 4 oz (1 stick) for four yolks; more butter makes a softer heap that slumps.
- "The best butter"Probably fresh sweet (unsalted) butter, softened to spreading consistency but not melted or oiled. If only salted is available, taste as you go rather than trying to balance it later.
- Orange flower waterStill sold in Middle Eastern groceries and baking aisles. Strength varies a good deal between brands, so a full teaspoon in this quantity may be assertive; taste and stop short if your bottle is potent.
- The yolksHard-boil, cool completely, and sieve or grate the yolks while dry, before any butter goes near them. Wet or warm yolks turn gummy and the threads will not form cleanly.
- Snow cakeA plain white cake made with beaten egg whites; period recipes vary, and many are butter cakes using whites only. Any unfrosted, mildly sweet white cake or a plain sponge serves the purpose.
- Yield and keepingAbout a cup of finished butter, enough for six to eight servings with cake. Because it is butter and cooked egg with no acid or salt to speak of, keep it refrigerated, bring it out at the last moment, and finish it the same day.
Fairy butter is an English confection of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and recipes for it appear in Hannah Glasse and her many successors well before this American book picked it up. The name is often said to refer to the appearance: hard yolk and butter forced through a sieve emerge as fine pale threads, which the recipe itself compares to vermicelli. Orange flower water was the standard genteel flavouring for such dishes, and it was commonly paired with a plain white cake. The instruction that the two are "to be eaten together like bread and butter" is a reminder that this was served as an accompaniment, not a dessert on its own.