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Centennial Drops
White of one egg beaten to a stiff froth, quarter pound pulverized sugar, half tea-spoon baking-powder; flavor with lemon; butter tins and drop with tea-spoon about three inches apart; bake in a slow oven and serve with ice-cream. This is also a very nice recipe for icing.-Miss Alice Trimble, Mt. Gilead.
A meringue drop in all but name, with an unusually high sugar ratio that makes the finished cookie crisp and candy-like rather than marshmallowy. Two things decide the result: how much sugar you beat in and how gently you dry them out.
- The sugarA quarter pound is four ounces: about half a cup of granulated sugar by weight, or roughly a cup measured as powdered sugar. "Pulverized" in this period means finely ground sugar, whether bought that way or crushed at home, closest to modern superfine. Today's confectioners' sugar contains cornstarch and will give a chalkier, softer drop; superfine dissolves into the froth without weeping.
- The ratio is deliberateFour ounces of sugar to one egg white is roughly double the usual meringue proportion. Expect a small, very sweet, brittle drop that holds its shape with almost no spread, which is why three inches apart is generous.
- "Slow oven"Read this as 275-300F. Meringues are dried rather than baked; give them 45-60 minutes at that heat, then turn the oven off and leave them inside another half hour to finish crisping.
- Baking powderAn odd addition to a meringue and not standard practice now. It puffs the drops slightly and can leave a faint metallic edge from the older phosphate and alum formulations. Half a teaspoon is harmless if you want the period result; leaving it out gives a cleaner meringue.
- Flavoring with lemonUse a few drops of lemon extract or the zest, not the juice. Added liquid slackens a stiff-beaten white; if you want the acid for stability, a pinch of cream of tartar beaten in at the start does the job without thinning the froth.
- Butter tinsButter on a hot sheet encourages meringue to spread and then stick as it sets. Parchment on an unbuttered sheet releases cleanly and is the one substitution worth making.
- YieldAbout 18 to 24 teaspoon-sized drops from one white. Store airtight the moment they cool; humidity turns them tacky within hours.
- Using it as icingUnbaked, this is essentially an uncooked royal icing. Spread it thin and let it air-dry, or set it in the same slow oven. It contains raw egg white, so as a spread on an uncooked surface it carries the usual risk; pasteurized whites or meringue powder avoid it.
The name points to the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, which set off a fashion for attaching "Centennial" to everything from cakes to sewing patterns, and community cookbooks kept the label in circulation for a decade or more after the fair closed. The recipe itself is older than its name: sugar-and-egg-white drops of this kind appear in English and American manuscript books, and the names kisses and puffs are often attached to them, though that usage seems to be largely a nineteenth-century one; they were valued as a way to use up whites left over from custards and pound cakes. The contributor's line, "Miss Alice Trimble, Mt. Gilead," is consistent with the Buckeye Cookery family of books and their Ohio contributors, though the page itself supports no more than that. Serving the drops with ice cream places them in the late-century dessert course, where a crisp sweet alongside a frozen one was a familiar pairing.