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Milk Frosting
Put into a saucepan one teaspoon of butter, and, when melted, add one and one-half cups of sugar and one-half cup of milk. Stir until boiling point is reached and then allow to boil for ten minutes without stirring. Take
A boiled milk frosting — closer to fudge than to buttercream — where the whole result depends on how far the syrup cooks and when you begin beating. Note that the page breaks off mid-sentence at "Take"; the missing line almost certainly directed the cook to take the pan from the fire, beat until creamy, and spread at once.
- The hinge: stop stirringOnce the mixture boils, leave it alone. Stirring a hot sugar syrup seeds large crystals and gives a grainy frosting; the smooth texture comes from cooling the syrup undisturbed and only then beating it.
- Use a thermometer instead of the clockTen minutes at a boil is a guess that depends on your pan and burner. Cook to 238F on a candy thermometer (soft-ball stage) — with only 1/2 cup of milk, a wide pan can overshoot well past that in ten minutes and set hard before it reaches the cake.
- Beating stageRemove from the heat and let the syrup cool to roughly 110F, then beat with a wooden spoon or hand mixer until it loses its gloss and thickens. Spread immediately; this type of frosting stiffens within a minute or two of turning creamy.
- Milk scorchingMilk sugars and proteins catch on the bottom long before the syrup reaches temperature. Use a heavy-bottomed pan, and expect a pale caramel color and flavor — that faint cooked-milk taste is characteristic, not a fault.
- Butter quantityOne teaspoon is not a mistake; boiled frostings of this type often call for only a trace. It would help limit foaming and add a little gloss rather than enrich the frosting.
- FlavoringNo flavoring appears in the text as printed, though it breaks off mid-sentence and the missing line may have called for one. A half teaspoon of vanilla stirred in after the pan comes off the heat is period-appropriate; adding it while boiling drives it off.
- YieldAbout one cup — enough to cover the top and sides of a single 8-inch layer, or the top of a small loaf cake. Double it for a two-layer cake.
- If it sets in the panReturn it to low heat with a tablespoon of milk and stir just until fluid again, then re-cool and beat. Overcooked batches can also be poured into a buttered pan and cut as fudge.
Boiled frostings of this kind filled the gap between plain confectioners'-sugar icing and the egg-white meringue frostings that were also common in late-Victorian cake work. Milk or cream in place of water puts the recipe squarely in fudge territory — sugar, milk and butter, cooked to the same soft-ball stage — and American home cooks took up both around the same period, once cheap granulated sugar and reliable stovetop heat made sugar-boiling a routine kitchen task rather than a confectioner's trade. The Butterick Cook Book (1911) was published by the pattern company as part of its broad program of household instruction for readers of its magazines, and it includes a chapter on fillings and frostings.