SC - Icings and Pastes: Was: Last Minute Details
Elise Fleming
alysk at ix.netcom.com
Tue Jul 13 06:14:40 PDT 1999
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
isnt 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 havent 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 Johnsons 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, doesnt it!)
I mentioned the modern drip test to see if ones 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 cant 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 Gentlewomans 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 todays 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. Wiltons 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).
Its sort of interesting to note that the first cake icings seem to
be the royal icing prototype put on marchpanes. By Digbys 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 dont suggest such a long beating time!
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