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Minnesota Frosting
Beat whites of three eggs until frothy, not white, add one and a third pints powdered sugar gradually with one hand, beating briskly with the other. Flavor with a tea-spoon of vanilla. It is better not to beat the whites of the eggs until stiff before adding sugar, as it makes the icing very hard to dry. - Mrs. C. J., Winona, Minn.
An uncooked egg-white icing of the type once standard on layer cakes. The technique is sound, but the food safety basis has changed.
- Why the cautionThe whites are never heated at any stage. The icing is spread on a cooled cake and left to air-dry at room temperature, so nothing in the process reaches a temperature that would inactivate Salmonella, which can be present inside intact, clean shell eggs. Drying and sugar concentration do not make it safe. If you want a white icing of this kind, use a current recipe built on pasteurized whites or meringue powder, or a cooked meringue.
- The measurement"One and a third pints powdered sugar" is a volume, not a weight: about 2 2/3 cups, roughly 10 to 11 oz. Nineteenth-century powdered sugar was often sifted loaf sugar, coarser than modern confectioners' sugar, which is cut with about 3 percent cornstarch.
- The instruction that mattersThe note about not beating the whites stiff first is the real content of the recipe. The recipe's own reason is that stiffly beaten whites make the icing "very hard to dry"; frothy whites still hold free water, which lets the sugar dissolve and the icing spread and level.
- Drying, not bakingIcing of this type was left to set and dry in the open air rather than baked; the recipe's concern that stiff whites make it "hard to dry" implies just such a hold. That room-temperature hold is what makes the raw-white version unsuitable now.
- YieldThree whites and roughly 10 oz of sugar is enough to cover the top and sides of a single two-layer 8- or 9-inch cake, with little to spare.
Egg-white-and-sugar icings are generally said to have been the default finish for American cakes through the second half of the nineteenth century, well before butter-based frostings became common, and community cookbooks of the era carried many small variations on the same idea, each credited to a contributor by name and town. The attribution here to "Mrs. C. J., Winona, Minn." is typical of the genre: such compilations were put together from material contributors sent in, and the regional names attached to recipes are usually taken to mark the sender rather than any origin in the place itself. What distinguishes this version is not the ingredients, which are unremarkable, but the working note at the end about under-beating the whites, the sort of hard-won detail that circulated between cooks.