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Almond Frosting
Blanch one-half pint sweet almonds by putting them in boiling water; stripping off the skins, spread on a dry cloth until cold. Pound a few of them at a time in a mortar until well pulverized; mix carefully the whites of three eggs and three-fourths of a pint of powdered sugar; add almonds. Flavor with vanilla or lemon; dry in a cool oven or in the open air.
This is an uncooked royal-icing-style frosting: raw egg white beaten with sugar and ground almonds, then left to set in a cool oven or in the air. The technique was standard in 1900 and is no longer considered safe.
- Why it fails: the egg whites are never cookedThe whites are combined raw and the frosting is only dried. The book gives no temperature for a "cool oven," and low-temperature drying -- or air-drying, which is cooler still -- will not bring the interior of an icing to a temperature that would inactivate Salmonella, which can be present inside intact shell eggs. Drying firms the surface but does nothing to the pathogen risk.
- Sugar does not make it safeVery high sugar concentrations slow bacterial growth, but a poured or spread icing of this sort holds enough water to keep any organisms present alive, and it may sit at room temperature for days. If you want an almond-flavoured white icing, use a current recipe built on pasteurized egg whites or meringue powder.
- Sweet almonds, and why the book says so"Sweet almonds" is specified because bitter almonds were also sold in period groceries; they contain amygdalin and release hydrogen cyanide when crushed and wetted. Any almond you buy today is a sweet almond, but the distinction is the reason the adjective is there.
- The old measuresHalf a pint of almonds is 8 fluid ounces by volume, about 4 to 5 ounces of whole blanched nuts. Three-quarters of a pint of powdered sugar is 12 fluid ounces, or about 1 1/2 cups -- the original is measuring sugar by volume in a vessel, not by weight, so the ratio is approximate.
- "Powdered sugar" is not quite oursIn American books of this date powdered sugar usually means a finely ground sugar coarser than modern confectioners' sugar and without cornstarch. Substituting today's product changes both the texture and the way the icing sets.
- Blanching and poundingThe instruction to spread the skinned almonds on a cloth until cold and to pound only a few at a time is about oil: warm or over-worked almonds turn to paste rather than powder. This part of the method is sound and still worth knowing for any ground-almond preparation.
Almond icings sit at the junction of two older traditions: the sugar-and-egg-white icing later known as "royal icing," and marchpane or marzipan, the pounded almond paste that had decorated grand tables since the medieval period. By the late nineteenth century American cookbooks often offered both a plain white frosting and an almond variant, and almond coatings were sometimes used as an under-layer on fruit cake beneath a second white coat, though this recipe says nothing of that use. That almonds arrive here as whole nuts to be scalded, skinned and pounded in a mortar is a reminder of how much preliminary labour a cake still required. The direction to dry the finished frosting "in a cool oven or in the open air" suggests an oven with residual heat rather than one actively fired.