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Ornamental Icing
2 egg whites 3 cups sifted confectioner's sugar 2 tablespoons Argo or Kingsford's Cornstarch 1/3 teaspoon cream of tartar 4 drops desired flavoring Put the egg whites in a bowl with one-half cup of the sugar. Beat three minutes, then add the remaining sugar sifted with the cornstarch and cream of tartar, beating in a half cupful at a time. Add two or three drops of the desired flavoring. When all the sugar is in, a knife should make a clean cut, and the frosting should hold its shape. It may then be spread upon the cake with a knife dipped in hot water, and ornamental designs may be applied by means of a pastry bag and tube.
This is a royal icing, and the technique is sound, but the recipe depends on shell eggs that are beaten raw, spread on a cake and eaten without ever reaching a temperature that would kill anything living in them.
- Why the raw whites are the problemNothing in this method applies heat. Salmonella can be present in the white as well as the yolk of an intact shell egg, and beating, sugaring and air-drying do not destroy it. A hard crust on the outside of a piped rosette tells you nothing about the interior.
- Sugar is not a safeguard hereThree cups of confectioner's sugar to two whites gives a stiff icing, but the water activity of royal icing that has only skinned over is still high enough to support bacteria. Long-keeping preserves rely on far higher sugar concentrations and a dry finish throughout.
- Who is most at riskA raw-egg product carries the worst consequences for children, pregnant women, the elderly and the immunocompromised, all of whom may be among the eaters of a decorated cake.
- What to use insteadAny current royal icing recipe built on pasteurized egg whites or meringue powder will behave the same way under a pastry tube. Use one of those rather than adapting this.
- Argo and Kingsford'sBoth were, and Argo still is, brands of plain cornstarch. The recipe is not asking for anything proprietary. The starch would tend to keep the icing from drying quite so glassy and brittle.
- Confectioner's sugar has changedModern 10X already contains up to about 3 percent cornstarch. Period confectioner's sugar was not consistently starched to the same degree, which may be part of why the two tablespoons here read as generous now.
- The consistency test"A knife should make a clean cut" is the useful instruction in the whole recipe: draw a blade through the bowl and the channel should hold its walls rather than flow shut. That is still the standard check for piping-stiff royal icing.
- YieldTwo whites and three cups of sugar make roughly two cups of icing, enough to coat and pipe a single two-layer cake.
Royal icing of this type -- whites, powdered sugar and an acid to help the whites take air -- was a standard ornamental medium of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The name is generally traced to British usage and to the hard white icing on grand wedding cakes, though the technique predates any particular royal cake. Argo and Kingsford's were both cornstarch brands of the Corn Products Refining Company, so this version most likely comes from a manufacturer's booklet, of the kind American ingredient companies issued in quantity in the early twentieth century. Such booklets were free and widely circulated, and helped standardize home baking around named commercial products.