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Boiled Chocolate Frosting
To White Mountain Cream or Boiled Frosting add one and one half squares melted chocolate as soon as syrup is added to whites of eggs.
A one-line variation on the book's boiled (Italian meringue) frosting, so nearly everything that matters lives in the parent recipe. The points below cover the parts that trip up modern cooks.
- A square of chocolateIn this period a "square" is one ounce of unsweetened baking chocolate; unsweetened chocolate is still generally sold in bars scored into one-ounce portions. One and a half squares is 1.5 oz; melt it gently and keep it fluid but not hot enough to deflate the meringue.
- The parent recipeWhite Mountain Cream is sugar and water boiled until the syrup threads from the tip of a spoon, then poured in a thin stream onto stiffly beaten egg whites. Take the exact proportions from the parent recipe rather than assuming a figure.
- Thread stage means 238-240FThe thread test -- The old test is a syrup that spins a thread from the tip of a spoon; the book gives no temperatures. Confectionery tables usually put the thread stage in the low 230sF, and modern boiled-frosting directions often take the syrup a little higher. Undercooked syrup leaves the frosting soupy; overcooked syrup sets hard and grainy before you can spread it.
- The hinge: when the chocolate goes in"As soon as syrup is added" is the whole instruction. Beat the chocolate in while the meringue is still hot and slack; once it cools and stiffens, folding in melted chocolate breaks the foam and the frosting turns dull and streaky.
- Pour slowly, off the beaterAdd the syrup in a thin steady stream down the side of the bowl, avoiding the whisk, or the syrup flings against the cold bowl and sets into hard sugar shards.
- Beat until it holdsKeep beating after the chocolate is in, until the meringue is thick, glossy and just barely warm and holds its shape on the spoon. This is usually five to seven minutes with an electric mixer, longer by hand.
- Weather mattersBoiled frostings are notoriously unreliable on a humid day; the sugar draws moisture and the surface stays tacky rather than setting to the characteristic thin crust.
- YieldHow far it goes depends on the proportions in the parent recipe, so judge by eye rather than assuming it will fill and cover a two-layer cake. Use it the day it is made, as boiled frosting dries out quickly.
Boiled frosting is the domestic cousin of the pastry kitchen's Italian meringue, and it spread through American cookbooks in the later nineteenth century. The name White Mountain Cream is attached to the plain version in Fannie Farmer's book. This chocolate variation reflects the period's other shift: unsweetened chocolate, sold in scored cakes by Baker's and others, had become cheap and standard enough that a cook could be told to add "one and one half squares" and be expected to know exactly what was meant. The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book is full of these terse cross-references, a habit of the cooking-school classroom where the base method was drilled first and the variations followed as one-line amendments.