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Frosting Without Eggs
To one heaping tea-spoon Poland starch and just enough cold water to dissolve it, add a little hot water and cook in a basin set in hot water till very thick (or cook in a crock; either will prevent its burning or becoming lumpy). Should the sugar be lumpy roll it thoroughly, and stir in two and two-thirds cups while the starch is hot; flavor to taste, and spread on while the cake is a little warm. This should be made the day before using, as it takes longer to harden than when made with eggs, but it will never crumble in cutting. This is excellent. - Mrs. Ola Kellogg Wilcox.
A cooked starch fondant, made when eggs were dear or scarce. It behaves like a soft poured icing rather than a buttercream, and the one thing that matters is getting the starch fully gelatinized before the sugar goes in.
- Poland starchA nineteenth-century proprietary starch, generally taken to be a fine potato starch of the sort also sold for laundry use. Potato starch from a supermarket or Asian grocer is the nearest equivalent; cornstarch will work but sets slightly cloudier and stiffer.
- Slurry first, then heatDissolving the starch in cold water before any hot water is added is what keeps it smooth. Starch dropped straight into hot liquid seizes into lumps that will not stir out.
- Basin in hot waterThis is a double boiler. Any heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water does the job; the "crock" alternative is a thick earthenware vessel that heats gently enough not to scorch. Cook until the paste is thick and translucent, not chalky.
- The sugarTwo and two-thirds cups means powdered or "pulverized" sugar, which caked in storage and was rolled out to break up the lumps, as the recipe directs. Modern confectioners' sugar is already sifted; whisk out any clumps and add it while the starch is still hot, or it will not dissolve.
- QuantitiesOne heaping teaspoon of starch to that much sugar is a very high ratio of sugar to binder, which is why the finished icing sets hard rather than fluffy. The amount of "a little hot water" is left to judgement; work up from a tablespoon or two, aiming for a spreadable paste.
- Spread warm, rest overnightIt goes on while the cake is still a little warm, as directed, and is smoothed quickly. Make it the day before: the recipe warns it takes longer to harden than an egg frosting and wants a full night to firm through.
- FlavoringVanilla, lemon or almond extract, added off the heat. Use less than you would in a buttercream, as there is no fat to mute it.
- YieldRoughly two cups of icing, which should be about enough for a single layer cake or the top of a sheet cake, though the recipe specifies no cake size.
Eggless frostings appear throughout late-century American cookbooks for practical reasons: hens laid seasonally, eggs were expensive in winter, and a boiled meringue icing depended on both fresh whites and a steady hand. Substituting a cooked starch paste for the whites gave a coating that set hard and, as Mrs. Wilcox notes, cut cleanly instead of shattering into crumbs a real advantage when a cake had to be sliced for company. The reliance on a named brand of starch is also of its period; The Dixie Cook Book (1883) was compiled from contributed receipts, and Poland starch is often said to have stood in for what we would simply call potato starch.