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Strawberry Meringue
This is sold extensively at the fine bakeries under the name, generally, of strawberry shortcake. For the cake take the butter sponge cake, or 8 ounces granulated sugar--1 cup. 5 eggs. 4 ounces butter, melted--1/2 cup. 1/2 cup of milk. 12 ounces of flour--3 cups. 1 teaspoonful of baking powder. Beat the sugar and eggs together a minute or two, add the melted butter, the milk, the powder and the flour. Bake on jelly-cake pans as thin as it can be spread, or, if preferred, on a large shallow baking pan. The cake is liable to rise in the middle and must be spread on the pan accordingly. When done cover the top of the cake with raw strawberries and spread a thick covering of meringue on top of them. Set the cake in the oven one minute to bake a very light color on top, but the meringue paste must not be cooked through.
The meringue paste or frosting is made by beating 5 whites of eggs to a firm froth and then mixing in 4 tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar, Cut in squares to serve.
A bakery-trade sheet cake from the days when "strawberry shortcake" meant a sponge sheet, not a biscuit. The problem is the topping: the recipe deliberately leaves the meringue uncooked.
- Why the cautionThe instruction is explicit: one minute in the oven, only enough to colour the surface, and "the meringue paste must not be cooked through." Five egg whites spread thick over the cake will not approach the 160F usually cited for inactivating Salmonella, and the finished cake is cut in squares and held at room temperature. Whatever the reasoning behind it in the original, it is not a risk worth taking now. If you want a meringue-topped strawberry sheet cake, work from a current recipe using pasteurised whites or a cooked (Swiss or Italian) meringue.
- The meringue is also badly underbuiltThe meringue is also lean on sugar -- Four tablespoons of powdered sugar to five whites is well under what a modern meringue carries. Even setting the food-safety question aside, a foam that lightly sweetened has little to stabilise it and will not hold for long.
- Weights and volumesThe author helpfully gives both: 8 oz granulated sugar as 1 cup, 4 oz melted butter as 1/2 cup, 12 oz flour as 3 cups. By modern weight, 12 oz of all-purpose flour is closer to 2 3/4 cups.
- "Powdered sugar"In 1890s trade books this usually means finely ground granulated sugar, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today. Superfine or caster sugar is the closer equivalent.
- Jelly-cake pansShallow round tins about 9 inches across and less than an inch deep -- the ancestor of the modern sponge or layer tin. A rimmed half-sheet pan is the practical stand-in for the "large shallow baking pan" alternative.
- Baking powderOne teaspoon for 12 oz of flour is light by current standards, though five eggs are doing most of the lifting. Period baking powders were also variable in strength.
- OvenNo temperature is given. The author's only guidance is that the cake is liable to rise in the middle and must be spread on the pan accordingly.
The American Pastry Cook belonged to a genre of late nineteenth-century manuals written not for households but for the men running hotel, restaurant and bakery kitchens -- books that quote yields, tray sizes and selling names rather than family tradition. That commercial angle explains the opening line here: the author is telling his readers what the trade calls this thing, a sponge sheet with fruit and meringue on top sold over bakery counters as "strawberry shortcake." The meringue itself is the older European technique of a sweetened egg-white froth, browned only at the surface -- a finish that predates any understanding of why lightly warmed raw egg is a hazard.