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Meringue Icing
Beat the whites of six eggs to a very stiff froth (you can not beat them too stiff; and if they are not stiff the meringue will not be too stiff; and if they are not stiff the meringue will not be good.) While beating, add a saltspoonful of salt, also a teaspoonful of sugar; when well beaten up add half a pound of sugar, and stir it very lightly in, yet be careful to see it is well stirred in. This being ready, take the pie after baking (usually a lemon pie), and with a knife spread a thin coating of the meringue all over it; then with a cone (the same as used in other icing), filled with the meringue icing , proceed to work out some design. When finished return it to the oven to take a light brown color. You can work any design in this as well as in icing-sugar, but the patterns for this are larger, consequently are done with a cone with a larger portion cut off the point. For centers of meringue pies you can use such designs 1 2 3 7 6 Meringue Top.
Dessert Charlotte Russe. 355) as an ear of corn, an anchor, a "true lover's knot," a Maltese cross, a bunch of grapes, or whatever the fancy dictates; you can further decorate it with fruit jelly in addition to the meringue piping, putting on the jelly with a cone, and in the same manner as for piping. Chocolate is not used on meringue work, neither is the meringue ever colored except in some cases when it is colored a light cream color; pink colored sugar is sometimes sprinkled over it. To color this sugar, simply drop a little cochineal color on some granulated sugar, and rub it together until colored, then dry it, then rub it apart and keep it in a bottle ready for use. It will keep its color for years. I give one design (page 355) for the top of a meringue pie just as a guide.
A confectioner's meringue meant for piping rather than swirling, which changes how the sugar goes in. The text is garbled by a printer's repetition in the first sentence; the sense is simply that the whites must be very stiff.
- The hinge: dissolve the sugarFor piped work the sugar has to be beaten in a spoonful at a time once the whites hold soft peaks, not folded in at the end as written. Undissolved sugar gives a slack meringue that slumps out of the cone and weeps amber beads in the oven; rub a little between your fingers and stop only when you feel no grit.
- QuantitiesSix large whites is about 200 g. Half a pound of sugar is 8 oz, roughly 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons of granulated — about 3 tablespoons per white, which is what makes the meringue stiff enough to hold a piped anchor or corn ear.
- SaltspoonfulA saltspoon is about a quarter teaspoon. A pinch of cream of tartar, which this recipe does not call for, will hold the foam better than salt does.
- The coneA paper cone rolled from parchment, cut off at the tip; the book's "larger portion cut off the point" means an opening of perhaps 1/4 to 3/8 inch. A piping bag with a large plain or star tip does the same work.
- Oven for browningThe book gives no temperature, only 'return it to the oven to take a light brown color'. In a modern oven that is roughly 350°F for 12 to 15 minutes for meringue this thick, or 400°F for 6 to 8 if you want sharper contrast between tips and valleys. Watch it — piped detail scorches at the points long before the base is set.
- Spread onto a warm pieThe thin base coat should go onto filling that is still warm, and should touch the crust all the way round. Meringue laid on a cold filling sits in a pool of liquid by the next day and shrinks away from the rim in the oven.
- Cochineal sugarCochineal is still sold as carmine, and it is an insect-derived colour worth flagging to guests who avoid them. Any liquid or gel food colour rubbed into granulated sugar and dried on a tray works the same way.
- Yield and keepingEnough to coat and decorate one large pie very generously, and possibly two. Piped meringue is at its best within a few hours; refrigeration softens the piping.
The Dixie Cook Book, an 1880s compilation in the mould of Buckeye Cookery, includes a run of "ornamental icing" instructions that read as though taken down from a working confectioner rather than a home cook — the paper cone, the numbered plate of designs, the flat rule that chocolate is never used on meringue work. That professional voice matters: decorated pies and cakes were a bakery display item, and books of this period were teaching housekeepers to imitate a shop window. The named motifs are the standard Victorian ornamental vocabulary, an ear of corn, an anchor, a Maltese cross, a true lover's knot, the same repertoire piped in royal icing on wedding cakes. Meringue-topped lemon pie, assumed here as the default, was already a fixture of American baking by the 1880s; and cochineal, a dye from scale insects farmed in Mexico and later the Canaries, was for much of the nineteenth century among the most dependable reds a kitchen could buy.