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Maple Sugar Frosting
1 lb. soft maple sugar ½ cup boiling water Whites 2 eggs Break sugar in small pieces, put in saucepan with boiling water, and stir occasionally until sugar is dissolved. Boil without stirring until syrup will thread when dropped from tip of spoon. Pour syrup gradually on beaten whites, beating mixture constantly, and continue beating until of right consistency to spread.
This is an Italian meringue by another name: hot syrup beaten into raw whites until the mixture cools and sets. The hinge is the syrup temperature, and the original tells you to judge it by eye.
- "Will thread"Thread stage is usually given as about 230-235F on a candy thermometer, the point where syrup falls from the spoon in a fine unbroken line. For a frosting firm enough to hold swirls, aim at the upper end of that range; taken much below it the icing may stay soft and be slow to set.
- Soft maple sugarThis appears to mean maple sugar sold in soft cakes or in a still-moist grade rather than the hard-pressed candy blocks. Granulated maple sugar works and needs no breaking up, though it is safer to weigh it than to measure by cup. Maple syrup is not a like-for-like substitute without a longer boil to drive off the extra water.
- That much waterA pound of sugar to 1 1/2 cups water is a thin syrup by modern standards and will take some time at the boil to reach thread stage. Nothing is wrong; just do not walk away, and do not stir once it boils or the sugar may grain.
- Pan and washing downUse a heavy saucepan at least three times the volume of the syrup, and wipe crystals from the sides with a wet brush before the boil begins. Maple sugar scorches more readily than cane, so keep the heat moderate rather than fierce.
- Pouring on the whitesBeat the whites to soft peaks first, then add the syrup in a thin stream down the side of the bowl, never onto the beaters. A stand mixer makes this a one-person job; by hand you want a second pair of hands.
- Beating timeExpect 7-10 minutes of steady beating after the syrup is in. The frosting is ready when the bowl feels only just warm and the mass holds its shape on the spatula. Overbeaten boiled frosting turns dull and tears; spread it the moment it will stand.
- Egg whitesThe hot syrup brings the whites well up in temperature but does not reliably pasteurize them. If serving anyone frail, elderly, pregnant or very young, use pasteurized whites.
- Yield and humidityEnough to fill and frost a two-layer 8- or 9-inch cake generously. Boiled frostings weep and stay tacky in damp weather; make it on a dry day and let the finished cake stand uncovered an hour to form a light crust.
Boiled frosting of this kind, hot syrup whipped into egg whites, is generally said to have been the standard American cake finish before butter-based icings took over in the twentieth century, and variations on it turn up widely in the period's cookbooks. The maple version is a New England economy as much as a flavor: maple sugar is often described as the everyday sweetener across northern New England and Quebec well into the nineteenth century, when imported cane sugar was expensive and maple could be had from a neighbor's sugar bush. It was sold pressed into cakes or tubs, which is why the recipe begins by telling you to break it up. The technique itself is the confectioner's syrup-and-meringue method that pastry cooks now call Italian meringue, borrowed into home baking at a time when a household cook was expected to read syrup stages by the behavior of a spoonful rather than a thermometer.