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Gelatine Frosting
2½ tablespoons boiling water ½ teaspoon granulated gelatine ¾ cup confectioners' sugar ½ teaspoon vanilla Dissolve gelatine in boiling water. Add sugar and flavoring and beat until of right consistency to spread. Crease in squares when slightly hardened.
A quick uncooked frosting stabilised with a trace of gelatine, meant to be spread while still warm and pliable. It sets faster than a plain water icing and holds a cut edge, which is why the original tells you to mark it into squares.
- The proportionsThe printed page was checked: the water is 2½ tablespoons, the sugar ¾ cup, and the vanilla ½ teaspoon, as given here. Even so, work from the sugar and add the water a little at a time until the frosting spreads.
- Granulated gelatineThis is plain unflavoured powdered gelatine, the same product sold today in ¼-ounce envelopes (about 2¼ teaspoons). Half a teaspoon is a small fraction of one envelope, so measure rather than guess.
- Dissolve properlyThe hinge of the recipe. The gelatine must be fully dissolved in the boiling water before any sugar goes in, or the frosting will carry gritty specks that never soften. Stir until the liquid is completely clear.
- Sift the sugarModern boxed confectioners' sugar still packs, and there is too little liquid here to dissolve lumps out later, so sift before beating it in.
- Work quicklyGelatine begins setting as it cools. Beat only until the mixture holds a soft ribbon and spread at once; if it stiffens in the bowl, set it over warm water for a moment to loosen.
- Creasing in squaresAn instruction for a sheet cake or pan of small cakes. Score the surface with a thin knife once the frosting has skinned over but before it is fully firm, then cut through the cake when set.
- YieldEnough to cover the top of a single 8- or 9-inch cake, or a small sheet. Double it for a layer cake with a filled centre.
Gelatine frostings appear in American cookbooks around the turn of the twentieth century, when granulated gelatine in packets came into use alongside the older labour of boiling down calves' feet or shaving sheet isinglass, though sheet and prepared gelatines had been commercially available well before that. The same convenience powder turns up in jellies, charlottes and bavarian creams of the period and, here, in a frosting where a pinch of it does the structural work that a boiled sugar syrup or a beaten egg white would otherwise do. For a household without a candy thermometer, an icing that set reliably without cooking sugar to the thread stage was a genuine simplification, and the instruction to crease it into squares points to the era's fondness for small iced cakes served at teas and church suppers.