Home › Our Susan's Opinion of a Kitchen › Frosting
Frosting
Mrs. Louise Dewey.
One pint granulated sugar, moisten thoroughly with water sufficient to dissolve it when heated; let it boil until it threads from the spoon, stirring often; while the sugar is boiling, beat the whites of two eggs till they are firm; then when thoroughly beaten, turn them into a deep dish, and when the sugar is boiled, turn it over the whites, beating all together rapidly until of the right consistency to spread over the cake. Flavour with lemon if preferred. This is sufficient for two loaves.
This is boiled icing — a hot sugar syrup whipped into beaten whites, the ancestor of seven-minute frosting and Italian meringue. The whole thing turns on the syrup temperature, which the original describes by eye.
- A pint of sugarDry goods were measured by volume in this book: one pint is 2 cups, about 14 oz of granulated sugar. Roughly 1/2 cup water is enough to dissolve it; more only means longer boiling.
- "Threads from the spoon"The thread stage is 230–234F on a candy thermometer — syrup that falls from the spoon in a fine strand rather than in drops. Below this the frosting stays soupy and will not set; much above it and you get a stiff, crumbly icing closer to fondant.
- Stop stirring once it boilsStirring -- The recipe says to stir often while the syrup boils, but stirring boiling syrup encourages graining. Modern practice is to stir only until the sugar dissolves, then leave it alone and wash any crystals down from the sides of the pan with a wet brush.
- Pour in a thin stream"Turn it over the whites" reads as dumping, but the syrup should go in slowly down the side of the bowl while the whites are beating. All at once, it cooks the whites into threads and you will see them in the finished icing.
- Whip until it holdsWith a stand mixer this is 5–8 minutes on medium-high, until the bowl is no longer hot and the meringue holds a peak that just barely bends. It sets quickly once cool, so spread it while it is still slightly warm.
- FlavouringAdd lemon juice or extract, or vanilla, at the very end of beating. A teaspoon is plenty; more liquid slackens the icing.
- Doneness of the whitesThread-stage syrup does not reliably bring egg whites to a pasteurizing temperature the way a hotter soft-ball syrup (around 240F) does. If that matters for who is eating the cake, use pasteurized whites or powdered egg white.
- Yield"Sufficient for two loaves" — enough to cover and fill one 8-inch two-layer cake, or the tops of two loaf cakes.
- WeatherBoiled icing is humidity-sensitive. On a damp day it takes longer to stiffen and may weep; a dry kitchen gives the crisp shell with the soft interior that is the point of the style.
Boiled icing sits between the plain water-and-sugar glaze of earlier cookery and the butter-heavy American buttercreams of the twentieth century. It required nothing but sugar, water and eggs, but it did require judgment: candy thermometers were not standard equipment in a home kitchen of this period, and the syrup was read by how it fell from the spoon, using the sequence of stages — thread, soft ball, hard crack — familiar from confectionery receipts. Granulated sugar was a comparatively recent convenience; older receipts specify loaf sugar to be pounded and sifted first, and the ready availability of uniform white granulated sugar may be part of why frostings like this appear so often in community cookbooks of the period. The Home Cook Book was compiled from contributions by named local women, and this attribution to Mrs. Louise Dewey is typical.