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By Prof. C. H. King
Now Ornamental icing consists in working two or more colors of icing on one surface, such, for instance, as pink and white, or chocolate and white, sometimes with, sometimes without, the addition of crystallizing. To ice a cake white and pipe or ornament it with pink pipery, or ice it with pink or chocolate icing and pipe it witn white icing, would constitute ornamental icing. But there is another method called "inlaid," which consists of having different colored icing on the same surface, not simply a different colored piping on the icing. The best illustration I can give of this will, I think, be a chess-board. To do it take a cone, cut a fine point off, fill it as instructed in "artistic piping," draw fine lines first straight down one inch apart, then across at the same distance at right angles; you have then formed squares one inch across. fill these in alternately with either white or pink and white, and then chocolate icing or pink and chocolate. You then have the squares in two colors, the same as they would appear on a chess or checker-board. The only point to be here observed is to have your icing soft enough to just run smooth; the lines will prevent it from running together. You can work any pattern you choose in this manner by simply running a line of piping to form the design, then filling in as before described. You can also further vary this by marking out any design, and with a small paint-brush washing it over with white of egg or gum-water, then covering it with granulated sugar either plain white or colored; or you can cover it with powdered chocolate or rolled rock candy, either pink or white; shake off what will not stick, and you will find the design covered with the sugar; now pipe round the edge of the design with a fine cone of icing sugar, and it is complete. (346)
This is a decorating method rather than a formula, and it assumes you have already read King's chapter on "artistic piping" for the icing itself. The instructions still work; what has changed is the equipment and one or two of the materials.
- The icing meant hereKing gives no formula on this page, referring the reader back to his chapter on "artistic piping," but ornamental and inlaid work of this kind was normally done with a royal-type icing: egg white beaten with sifted confectioners' sugar, stiff for the outlines and let down with a few drops of water for the flood. His one instruction on consistency -- soft enough to just run smooth, with the piped lines holding it -- is essentially how flood work is done today.
- Raw egg whiteBoth the icing and the egg-white "wash" used as glue for the sugar go onto the cake uncooked. Use pasteurized whites or meringue powder, particularly if the cake is for children, the elderly or anyone pregnant.
- The coneA "cone" is a paper cornet rolled from parchment or greaseproof, with the tip snipped off to the width you want. A disposable piping bag with a No. 1 or No. 2 round tip does the same job, and a squeeze bottle is easier for the flooding stage.
- The hinge: consistency"Soft enough to just run smooth" is the whole trick. Flood icing should settle level in about ten seconds when a ribbon of it is dropped back into the bowl. Too stiff and the squares stay lumpy; too loose and it breaches the piped lines and bleeds into its neighbour.
- Work alternate squaresKing says to fill the squares "alternately" but does not mention letting them set. In practice it is safer to fill every other square first, as on the board, and let those form a skin before doing the rest; King's confidence that "the lines will prevent it from running together" holds only if the icing is not too loose.
- Gum-waterA solution of gum arabic in warm water, sold then by the druggist. Piping gel or a thin sugar syrup serves the same purpose as an adhesive for loose sugar.
- Powdered chocolate and rolled rock candy"Powdered chocolate" of this date may be either unsweetened cocoa or the sweetened ground chocolate sold for drinking; cocoa is the closer match for a dusting colour. Rolled rock candy is rock sugar crushed under a rolling pin, roughly what is sold now as coarse sanding or decorating sugar.
- ColouringPeriod pinks came from cochineal, which is still available but tints unevenly and thins the icing. Gel colours give stronger shade without loosening the consistency you have just adjusted.
- TimingPiped outlines need ten to fifteen minutes to firm before flooding, and a flooded surface wants several hours, ideally overnight in a dry room, before further piping is laid over it.
Professor C. H. King was one of the professional confectioners whose set pieces were reprinted in the domestic compilations of the period, and his tone gives him away: this is trade instruction, written for someone who expects to pipe for hours, sitting in a household book. Royal icing itself is generally traced to nineteenth-century British wedding-cake work, though the name's exact origin is traditional rather than documented. The chess-board is a telling choice of example. Late-Victorian display cakes were architectural objects, judged as much by their geometry and gloss as by their eating, and the "inlaid" technique King describes is the ancestor of the outline-and-flood method used on decorated cookies today.