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White Mountain Cream
Make a syrup by boiling one cup sugar and one-third cup of hot water. Stir constantly that it may not stick to the saucepan. When the syrup will form a thread when dropped from tip of spoon pour it gradually on the beaten white of an egg, beating the mixture continually and not stopping until the mixture has reached the right consistency for spreading. Add one teaspoon of vanilla or other flavoring, if desired. When properly made this frosting should be soft inside with a glossy surface. Any decorations must be put on when frosting is first spread, as the glossy surface must not be broken.
This is a boiled icing — what a pastry kitchen now calls Italian meringue. The whole thing turns on the sugar syrup reaching the right stage before it meets the egg white.
- The hinge: syrup stage"Forms a thread when dropped from the tip of a spoon" corresponds roughly to what candy tables call thread stage, in the region of 230°F, though published ranges vary. Boiled less than that and the frosting tends to stay soft and slow to set; boiled well beyond it and the icing is apt to turn brittle and crystalline as it cools.
- About that constant stirringStir only until the sugar has dissolved, then stop. Modern practice is to leave the syrup alone and wash stray crystals down from the pan sides with a wet brush; continued agitation of a hot concentrated syrup encourages the graininess this recipe is trying to avoid.
- QuantitiesOne cup of sugar, one-third cup hot water, and the white of one egg; the recipe specifies neither egg size nor type of sugar. Beat the white before the syrup is ready — it should be waiting, not the other way round.
- Pouring and beatingAdd the syrup in a thin steady stream down the side of the bowl, not into the middle of the beater. A stand mixer on medium-high does in five to eight minutes what the original expected of a wire whisk and a strong arm; stop when the bowl is barely warm and the meringue holds a soft peak.
- Raw-egg noteThe hot syrup heats the white considerably but this is not a fully cooked meringue. Pasteurized whites, sold in cartons, whip up the same way and remove the question entirely.
- HumidityBoiled icings are hygroscopic and sulk on damp days, staying tacky and refusing to form the promised skin. Dry weather, or a dry kitchen, makes the difference.
- Yield and timingThe recipe gives no yield; one egg white and a cup of sugar makes roughly enough to cover the top of a single small layer, and less than most cooks would want for filling and frosting a whole layer cake. Spread it the moment it is ready — it firms fast, and the recipe itself warns that once the glossy surface has set it must not be broken.
- DecorationsCoconut, nuts, or candied fruit go on while the frosting is first being spread and the surface is still soft, as the recipe directs; once a skin has formed they sit on the crust rather than adhering to it.
Boiled icing of this kind became the standard American cake finish in the second half of the nineteenth century, when reliable granulated sugar and cheap eggs made it practical for a home cook without a copper sugar-boiler. The name is often said, by folk tradition, to come from the snowy peaks of New Hampshire's White Mountains — the same conceit that gives us White Mountain cake — and "cream" here signals texture rather than dairy, since there is none in it. The insistence on an unbroken glossy surface is a period preoccupation; a cake was expected to look finished, and a scuffed icing gave the game away.