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Opera Caramel Frosting
½ cups brown sugar 1½ tablespoon butter ¾ cup thin cream Boil ingredients together in a smooth granite saucepan until a ball can be formed when mixture is tried in cold water. It takes about forty minutes for boiling. Beat until of right consistency to spread.
This is penuche in frosting form: a brown-sugar fudge cooked to the soft-ball stage and beaten until it will spread. The whole recipe turns on stopping the boil at the right temperature.
- The garbled measurement"34 cup thin cream" is almost certainly a printer's or scanner's rendering of ¾ cup. Thin cream in this period means light cream, roughly 18-20% fat; heavy cream will work but gives a denser, richer set.
- Soft ball, by numberA ball that holds its shape in cold water is 236-240F. Use a candy thermometer and take the pan off at 238F; the cold-water test is reliable but slower to read, and brown sugar darkens quickly past this point.
- Forty minutes is not a ruleBoiling time depends entirely on pan width and burner output. On a modern range in a wide saucepan this can reach soft ball in 10-15 minutes. Go by temperature, not the clock.
- Granite saucepanGraniteware is enamelled iron or steel, giving a smooth non-reactive surface for boiling sugar; the recipe does not say why it is specified. A heavy stainless or enamelled pan does the same job; avoid anything thin-bottomed.
- Cool before beatingThe recipe says only to beat, but fudge frostings go grainy if beaten hot. Let the syrup drop to about 110F undisturbed, then beat until it thickens and loses its gloss.
- Spread at onceIt sets fast. Have the cake ready and level; if the frosting stiffens past spreading, beat in a spoonful of hot cream to loosen it.
- YieldAbout 1¼ cups, enough to cover the top and sides of a single 8-inch layer or to fill and top a small two-layer cake.
The name comes from opera caramels, a soft brown-sugar-and-cream confection that was a staple of American candy shops and church-fair candy tables in the late nineteenth century; this frosting is simply that mixture stopped a little softer and beaten to spreading consistency. The confection is generally held to be closely related to what other regions called penuche or panocha, said to come from the Spanish for raw brown sugar. Why the theatre association attached to it is not documented. Its presence here reflects how fluid the line between candy-making and cake decorating was in a body of instruction built on the sugar-boiling stages: the cook who could read a cold-water test could make caramels, fondant, and frosting from very nearly the same pan.