SC - Horsemeat

[Michelle "TJ" Brunzie]

Mirhaxa wrote:

>The royal icing I'm familiar with has the texture of frosting to start 
>and dries rock hard. 

That's what I was referring to in my description of how to test to see 
if it is of the proper consistency.  However, your question caused me 
to digress from my morning activities and here is the result...

Okay...So someone asked what the difference was between royal icing and 
sugar plate.  I responded too quickly, using my quick-and-dirty version 
of royal icing, which is just sugar and liquid, usually rosewater, and 
no egg white. (Robert May uses only rosewater and sugar as does the 
1656 _Book of Fruits and Flowers_.)  However, Murrell (1621), Digby 
(1669) and many others do use egg white in their icing, although it 
isn’t called “royal icing.”  If you are looking for it, look for 
recipes for marchpanes.  What we call “royal icing” seems to have 
appeared first as a coating for them to make them glisten like “ice”, 
hence (I assume) the name “icing”.  I haven’t seen any name for this 
coating, so I assume the term “royal icing” is post-period.  Nowadays 
(in the US) we use it as elements of cake decoration and only 
occasionally as the complete covering of a cake, although I believe the 
British (and Australians?) use it more frequently, especially on a cake 
under-covered with marzipan.  (I recall the cake-cutting problems of 
one of Lyndon Johnson’s daughters when her wedding cake was covered 
with the stuff and no one told them it would be nearly impossible to 
cut through with their ceremonial sword.  Dates me, doesn’t it!)

I mentioned the modern “drip” test to see if one’s royal icing was at 
the proper consistency:  a drop of the icing should be re-incorporated 
into the mixture at about the count of 10.  One can pipe figures of 
royal icing, but you can’t knead the stuff or, to my knowledge, make 
“prints” of it (using molds) as one can do for sugar/gum paste.

Period sugar/gum paste was made of sugar ground finely, gum tragacanth, 
a liquid which was usually rosewater, and egg white.  Dawson (1597) 
adds lemon juice.  It is my current belief that sugar paste/sugar plate 
was also known as “paste royall”, especially the white version.  W.I. 
Gent (1653), _A True Gentlewoman’s Delight_, has a recipe titled “To 
make paste Royall white that you may make Court Bouls, or Caps, or 
Gloves, Shooes, or any prettie thing Printed in Moulds.”  It includes 
sugar, gum tragacanth, rosewater, musk which is made into a paste, 
rolled out with a “rouling pin” and printed “with your moulders”.  Many 
of the later 17th-century cookery books will have recipes for “paste 
royall” but not for sugar paste or sugar plate.  This is why I think 
looking at the ingredients and what is to be done with the item is more 
important than the name of the thing.  And, why I think some of this 
confusion/similarity has carried over into today’s cake decorating 
world.  Look at the following...

The Wilton cake decorating book gives as gum paste ingredients:  
Gum-tex or tragacanth gum, glucose, water, sugar.  Mexican gum paste 
(pastillage) contains similar ingredients.  One Wilton recipe adds 
gelatin in place of glucose and has no gum tragacanth or Gum-tex.  All 
of these get worked to a “very stiff dough”.  (Royal icing is not made 
that thick.  It is more liquid.)

Another modern sugarcraft book has these ingredients for “sugarpaste”: 
sugar, glucose, gelatin, glycerine, water.  Their recipe for “modelling 
paste” is sugar, gum tragacanth, glucose, water.  They want the mixture 
to be a “soft dough”.  A British cake decorating book has for 
“sugarpaste icing” egg white, glucose, sugar.  Their royal icing is egg 
white, sugar, glycerine, lemon juice.  Still another one gives 
ingredients for fondant icing: glucose, sugar, gelating, water, white 
vegetable fat.  For royal icing they include egg white, sugar, lemon 
juice or acetic acid.  Their “modelling paste” has two versions:  1) 
“plastic icing” which includes sugar, glucose, water, gelatin, white 
vegetable fat; then add gum tragacanth to make the modelling paste; 2) 
white margerine or vegetable fat, sugar, gum tragacanth, gelatin, cold 
water, boiling water, egg white.  Their pastillage is royal icing plus 
gum traganth and more sugar.  Wilton’s “rolled fondant” recipe includes 
gelatin, water, glucose, glycerine, solid vegetable shortening, sugar.  
There is also a cooked fondant version used pastries.  Confusing??

Now, after all this “mess”, you can see that the ingredients are pretty 
much the same, but the amounts would vary, depending on whether you 
wanted a liquidy mix (royal icing) or a more solid dough (rolled 
fondant, gum/sugar paste, pastillage).

It’s sort of interesting to note that the first cake “icings” seem to 
be the royal icing prototype put on marchpanes.  By Digby’s time, at 
least, this icing topping was put onto cakes.  From what I read of his 
recipe “To make a cake”, you kept beating the sugar, egg whites, and 
rosewater for the entire time the cake is baking (2 hours) before you 
remove the cake, spread the icing on top, and set it back again to 
harden.  Other recipes don’t suggest such a long beating time!



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