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Maple Sugar Frosting
Make a syrup of one pound of fresh maple sugar and one-half cup boiling water. When syrup threads, pour over beaten whites of two eggs, as directed in Brown Sugar Frosting, beating constantly until of the right consistency to spread.
This is a boiled-syrup meringue frosting — what later books call seven-minute or Italian meringue icing — with maple sugar standing in for cane. The whole recipe turns on the temperature of the syrup.
- "When syrup threads"The thread stage is usually given as about 230-235F on a candy thermometer, where a spoonful drops in a fine thread. Taking it to the upper end, or just into soft-ball (235-240F), gives a frosting that sets firmer; a cooler syrup will be slacker and slower to hold a peak.
- A pound of maple sugarSold in the period as hard pressed cakes, which need grating or chopping before they will dissolve. A pound is about 2 cups grated, and today granulated maple sugar from a maple producer is the closest equivalent. Maple syrup is not a substitute here — the water content is wrong.
- Ratio and yieldA pound of sugar to two egg whites is a heavy syrup load, giving a dense, quick-setting icing rather than a fluffy one. It makes enough to fill and cover two 9-inch layers generously; halve it for a single sheet or a dozen cupcakes.
- The pourBeat the whites to soft peaks first, then add the hot syrup in a thin steady stream down the side of the bowl with the beater running. Dumping it in cooks the whites into threads of scrambled egg.
- Use a mixer"beating constantly" meant several minutes of steady hand work, whether with a whisk or a hand-cranked beater. A stand mixer on medium-high does it in 5 to 7 minutes, until the bowl is barely warm and the mass holds its shape.
- Work fastThis frosting stiffens in the bowl soon after it reaches spreading consistency. Have the cake cooled and waiting, and spread with an offset spatula dipped in hot water.
- WeatherBoiled meringue frostings weep and refuse to set on a humid day. Cook the syrup a couple of degrees higher if the kitchen is damp.
- Egg whitesThe hot syrup raises the temperature of the whites considerably as it is beaten in, but this does not reliably pasteurize them; if you are cooking for someone frail, use pasteurized whites, allowing that they may be slower to whip.
Maple sugar, not maple syrup, was the usual household form of the sweetener through much of the nineteenth century: syrup was boiled down further and pressed into hard cakes because sugar kept and shipped where syrup did not. In New England, upstate New York and Quebec it could be cheaper than imported cane, and cookbooks of the period treat it as an everyday sweetener rather than a specialty. The frosting belongs to the family of boiled icings that ran alongside, and increasingly displaced, uncooked confectioners'-sugar glazes in American baking; the hot syrup both stabilizes the meringue and gives the glossy, marshmallow-like set that a plain beaten icing cannot achieve. The cross-reference to Brown Sugar Frosting is typical of the period's editing: one master method, several sugars.