History of Cake Icing and Frosting

Also see History of Icing and Frosting and Cake Decorating and History of Cake.

Powdered sugar: From the 16th century to the 18th century, consumers got their sugar in varying degrees refinement. As a result, recipes from this period often included directions for clarifying and sifting sugar. Sugar was sold in the form of loaves or cones and pieces were cut from them with the use of a tool called a sugar cutter. The earliest form of powdered sugar was sugar that had been grated from the loaves or cones. The grated sugar could then be sifted. This sifted sugar was the first form of powdered sugar. With sifting, the finer sugar granules would be separated from the larger ones.

Icing vs Frosting

"Icing. A term often interchangeably with "frosting" and preferred in America to describe the sugar-and-water mixture used to decorate and cover cakes..."Frosting" actually precedes "icing" in print, the former appearing around 1610, the latter in 1760, with icing considered a somewhat lighter, decorative glaze than frosting. But in America it became normal to used "icing" (and the verb "to ice") to describe either form of the confection."
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 166)

In some North American minds, a difference between the two terms is emerging. In this thinking, frosting is fluffier than icing, and has more volume because air is whipped into it, and won’t dry hard like icing. Icing is more like a glaze, is thinner, isn’t whipped, and will dry harder.

Given this distinction, icing actually existed before frosting, probably as early as the 1600s. It was a cooked granulated sugar and egg white mixture spread on cakes and allowed to harden so that it resembled ice.

Early Icings

The history of modern confectionery is generally traced to Renaissance Europe, where white sugar (although available) was very expensive and highly prized. At that time, sugarpaste and marchepane (marzipan: a paste of almonds and sugar shaped into elaborate forms) were sometimes used to decorate elaborate cakes. Food historians generally trace modern icing, named such because the finished product, a glaze (aka glace), was supposed to look like ice, to 18th century England.

"In medieval times, icing--a sprinkling of sugar--was put on top of savoury as well as sweet foods: fish pies, for instance. But the iced cakes we are familiar with today started to emerge in recognizable form in the seventeeth century; in those days, once the sugar had been applied (either directly, or to a layer of beaten egg white), the cake was returned to the oven for a while for the icing to harden.

"Davidson...surveys the evolution of icing in England in the 18th century and 19th centuries and identifies Mrs. Raffald (1769) as the first author to provide for the combination of cake, marzipan, and royal icing. Her cake was a 'bride cake', which had also been known as a 'great cake' and only acquired the name 'wedding cake' in the 19th century. However, until the late 19th century, icing was reserved for special cakes. An 18th century icing was usually made by beating the ingredients together in a mortar, spreading the mixture over the cake, and drying it in a low heat. Mrs. Glasse (1747) writes: 'with a Brush or Bundle of Feathers, spread it all over the cake, and put it in the oven to dry; but take Care the Oven does not discolour it.'"
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press: Oxford] 1999 (p. 394-5)

Mrs. Raffald's icing recipes [1769].

"To make Almond Icing for the Bride Cake
Beat the whites of three eggs to a strong froth; beat a pound of Jordan almonds very fine with rosewater. Mix your almonds with the eggs lightly together [with] a pound of common loaf sugar beat fine, and put in by degrees. When your cake is enough, take it out an lay your icing on and put it in to brown."

"To make Sugar Icing for the Bride Cake
Beat two pounds of double-refined sugar with two ounces of fine starch, sift it through a gauze sieve. Then beat the whites of five eggs with a knife upon a pewter dish half and hour. Beat in your sugar a little at a time, or it will make the eggs fall and will not be so very good a colour. When you have put in all your sugar beat it half an hour longer, then lay it on your almond icing and spread it even with a knife. If it be put on a as soon as the cake comes out of the oven, it will be hard by that time the cake is cold."
---The Experienced English Housekeeper, Elizabeth Raffald [c. 1769], with an introduction by Roy Shipperbottom [Southover Press:East Sussex] 1997 (p. 135)

Simon R. Charsley gives us this summary of the changes in icing from the seventeenth century to the mid-eighteenth century, includig a recipe by Hannah Glasse where a Great Cake is iced with a soft meringue and not put in the oven to dry. This marks a big change from the earlier icings that were put in an oven to dry.

"Though cake icing had begun, perhaps only in the highest circles, in the seventeenth century, until the early nineteenth century if anything were to be iced it was most likely to be marchpanes [the forerunner of marzipan] in the early period, tarts rather later. Only a simple glazing was involved when the term 'ice' first began to be used. The earlier decorated marchpanes already referred to were, as has been seen, to be washed over with a rosewater syrup before being put into the oven for that will make the 'Ice'. The same should, however, also be done with a cake as soon as it came out of the oven...

The addition of white of egg was the beginning of new things and there was always more than one possibility...The spicing of icings was...already on its way out in the eighteenth century. A simple version, merely a pound of sugar to the whites of seven eggs, was offered by the first Scottish cookery book (McLintock 1736)...

Starch began occasionally to feature at the same period. It was often taken up subsequently and came to be added to commercial icing powder when this began to be manufactured in the mid-nineteenth century. Also in the nineteenth, lemon juice was substituted for the earlier flower-waters and the passion for whiteness projected some into including the powder blue. The concern with whiteness had been explicit, despite the somewhat different initial connotations of the term ice, since icings in the modern sense developed out of glazes. Icing was, until much more recent times, an item of lavish display in itself, its whiteness and direct indicator of the quality and expense of the sugar from which it was produced...By then, colouring was a possibility, as it had not been at the earlier period, and for that an inferior sugar could be used.

By then too, perhaps with a change in the ovens used, ...'Cakes should never be put into an an oven after being iced,'... Modification was made over time therefore, and there was some more radical experimentation continuing too. Hannah Glasse tried adding starch and some gum tragacanth as another way to Ice a great Cake in a confused entry of her first edition [The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, first published in 1747]. In her third, To Ice a Great Cake she proposed something altogether different, twenty-four egg whites to one pound of sugar, put onto a cold cake: ....The effect would have been what in modern terms woud have been a soft meringue rather than icing...Even in the eighteenth century there had therefore been a good deal of experimentation. Fondant icing was available but mixtures normally termed royal icing remained the standard in Britain."
---Wedding Cakes and Cultural History, Simon R. Charsley [Routledge:London] 1992 (p. 67-69)

And here is a recipe from American Cookery by Amelia Simmons (1796), who gives us tips about how to make the cake "whiter and to not put the cake back in the oven after frosting:

Loaf Cake No. 1

Rub 6 pound of sugar, 2 pound of Lard, 3 pound of butter into 12 pound of flour, add 18 eggs, 1 quart of milk, 2 ounces of cinnamon, 2 small nutmegs, a tea cup of coriander seed, each pounded fine and sifted; add one pint of brandy, half a pint of wine, 6 pound of stoned raisins, 1 pint of emptins [liquid form of yeast], first having dried your flour in the oven, dry and roll the sugar fine, rub your shortning and sugar half an hour, it will render the cake much whiter and lighter, heat the oven with dry wood, for 1 and half hours, if large pans be used, it will then require 2 hours baking, and in proportion for smaller loaves.

To frost it. Whip 6 whites, during the baking, add 3 pound of sifted loaf-sugar and put on thick, as it comes hot from the oven. Some return the frosted loaf into the oven, it injures and yellows it, if the frosting be put on immediately it does best without being returned into the oven.

Royal icing

Royal icing descends from 18th century glace and sugar paste. Recipes for these confections present themselves under several names and and various permutations. Royal sugar sculpture elevates this substance to veritable works of art.

While recipes creating "royal icing" type coatings exist in 18th/19th century British & American cookbooks, the oldest print reference for a recipe with that title was published in 1896. Prior to this, our sources reveal this item was titled "Ornamental Icing."

What are the differences/similarities between Royal icing and Buttercream frosting? Royal Icing is traditionally made with egg whites, sugar, lemon juice. It produces a hard product well suited for decoration. Butter Cream recipes are all over the map. Original Butter Cream recipes featured sweet butter. A few also included dairy cream. Butter Cream frostings produce a softer, moister covering condusive to conveying flavor rather than artistic decoration.

[1896]
"Royal Icing
Take the whites of 2 or 3 eggs, being very particular to remove every particle of yolk; place in a clean bowl; now stir in sufficient of the very finest pulverized sugar, to make a medium thick paste: now add 10 or 15 drips of citric acid (procure come dry citric acid at any drug store, and dissolve it in water); lemon juice may also be used, but the acid is best; this is to produce a gloss, also to whiten the icing; now with a fork or spoon beat this paste until it is very light and stiff, so stiff that when you take out the spoon the icing will stand up in drops: then it is done; do not add any more sugar after beginning to beat it, as it would make it very heavy. The object is to produce as stiff an icing as possible, and at the same time to have it light and spongy. Fancy Cook."
---"Housekeeper's Department," Boston Daily, April 12, 1896 (p. 27)

"Royal Icing
Beat up well in an earthen bowl with wooden spatulas, 3 lbs. of icing sugar and 8 eggwhites. Add a few drops of aecetic acid, lemon juice or cream of tartar. When partly beaten the icing can be used for covering wedding cakes using a rather stiff icing for first coat and a softer icing for second coat so it can be spread nice and smooth. It will aquire a nice gloss if dried before the open oven door mouth. For decorating icing continue beating till icing stands up well and can be drawn to points. When icing is to be used for decorating with fine tubes the sugar best be sifted or some of the icing can be presssed thru a fine clean sieve. This icing dries quickly and must therefore be covered up with a damp cloth or a plaster of paris cover which is soaked in water. Add a little blueing to icing to make it look whiter."
---Practical Cake-Art, Fred Bauer [Fred Bauer:Chicago IL] 1923 (recipe no. 64)

"Royal Icing
Take from 3 to 4 egg whites of eggs to 1 lb. XXXX sugar and a pinch cream of tartar. Put in a cake mixer and beat until it stands up well. This icing is used for decorating fancy wedding and birthday cakes. Also all kinds of flowers. In making flowers with this icing it is best to run them on wax paper until dry, then remove them and place on the cakes."
---Master Cake Baker, Cleve Carney [Calumet Baking Powder Company:Chicago IL] 1927 (p. 83)

Boiled Icings

Boiled icings is a generic term for a group of cake icings (aka frostings) that are “boiled”; more accurately, made usually from a hot sugar syrup, and / or cooked over a double boiler. Many were very economical, avoiding the use of eggs or fat (remember, dietary fat used to be expensive), and thus these icings tend to be either very low in fat, or fat-free. The thickening was achieved through the cooking instead. They were of an era when money was short, ingredients were luxuries, but there someone in the household had the extra time to cook a cake frosting.

Boiled icing is simply an Italian meringue, which is thought to date back to the 18th century. This “vintage” icing is getting a new life across the country as chefs are exploring classic foods.

The first icings were usually a boiled composition of the finest available sugar, egg whites and [sometimes] flavorings. This icing was poured on the cake. The cake was then returned to the oven for a while. When removed the icing cooled quickly to form a hard, glossy [ice-like] covering. Many cakes made at this time still contained dried fruits (raisins, currants, citrons). Frosting recipes, based on butter, cream or milk, and powdered icing sugar started to appear at the start of the 1900s.

The second generation of frosting / icing involved cooking. In the original 1884 Boston Cooking School Cook Book there is a recipe called “Boiled Icing”. It was a prelude to today’s boiled frostings.

“Boiled Icing – One cup of granulated sugar, one third of a cup of boiling water, white of one egg, and one salt-spoonful of cream of tartar. Boil the sugar and water without stirring, until the syrup taken up on a skewer will ‘thread’ or ‘rope’. When it is nearly at that point, beat the egg [white] stiff, add the cream of tartar, and pour the boiling syrup over the egg [white] in a fine stream, beating well. When it thickens and is perfectly smooth, pour it over the cake. It hardens quickly, and should be put on the cake before it stiffens enough to drop.”
- 1884 Boston Cooking School Cook Book

When Fannie Farmer took over the Boston Cooking School [1891] she created a frosting recipe called “White Mountain Cream”. The new recipe was flavored with either vanilla extract or lemon juice. The addition of a flavoring was what set it apart and allowed it to be re-named. It was otherwise the same basic boiled frosting. In turn, the White Mountain Cake had a frosting named in its honor.

White Mountain Cream

1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla or
1/3 cup cold water
1/2 tablespoon lemon juice
White 1 egg

Put sugar and water in saucepan, and stir to prevent sugar from adhering to saucepan; heat gradually to boiling-point, and boil without stirring until syrup will thread when dropped from tip of spoon or tines of silver fork. Pour syrup gradually on beaten white of egg, beating mixture constantly, and continue beating until of right consistency to spread; then add flavoring and pour over cake, spreading evenly with back of spoon. Crease as soon as firm. If not beaten long enough, frosting will run; if beaten too long, it will not be smooth. Frosting beaten too long may be improved by adding a few drops of lemon juice or boiling water. This frosting is soft inside, and has a glossy surface. If frosting is to be ornamented with nuts or candied cherries, place them on frosting as soon as spread.

In her first Boston Cooking School Cook Book 1896, she introduced a new version of Boiled Frosting. “Make same as White Mountain Cream. This frosting, on account of the larger quantity of egg [whites], does not stiffen so quickly as White Mountain Cream, therefore is more successfully made by the inexperienced.”

Boiled Frosting

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
Whites 2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla, or
1/2 tablespoon lemon juice

Make same as White Mountain Cream. This frosting, on account of the larger quantity of egg, does not stiffen so quickly as White Mountain Cream, therefore is more successfully made by the inexperienced.

And a recipe from 1894, Mrs. Charles H. Gibson’s Maryland And Virginia Cook Book:

“Boiled Icing: To one pound of the finest pulverized sugar, add three wineglasses of clear water. Let it stand until it dissolves. Then boil it until perfectly clear. Beat well the whites of four eggs. Pour the sugar into the dish with the eggs, but do not mix them until the syrup is lukewarm, then beat all together for one hour. Season to your taste with vanilla, rose water, or lemon juice. The first coating may be put on the cake as soon as it is well mixed. Rub the cake with a little flour before you apply the icing. While the first coating is drying continue to beat the remainder. You will not have to wait long if the cake is set in a warm place near the fire. This is considered an excellent recipe for icing.”
— Charles H. Gibson. Mrs. Charles H. Gibson’s Maryland And Virginia Cook Book. John Murphy & Company. 1894

By 1935, Boiled Frosting, White Mountain Frosting, and Seven-minute Frosting were well known:

Cooked Frostings — The so-called boiled frosting — a sugar and water syrup poured and beaten into stiffly beaten egg whites; the White Mountain frosting (the same but with a larger proportion of egg white); and the seven minute frosting, for which all ingredients are put together in the double boiler, and cooked under constant beating.”
— Caldwell, Katherine. The National Cooking School Series: Lesson 10. St Petersburg, Florida: The Independent. Tuesday, 12 February 1935

Precursors to modern buttercream

Precursors to modern buttercream are late 19th century cake fillings/frostings employing rich cream. These recipes would have produce a more liquidy type of frosting than we know today, but the finished product was probably pretty close:

"Cream frosting. From Mrs. Mary Payton, of Oregon, Lady Manager. One cup of sweet thick cream, sweetened and flavored with vanilla. Cut a loaf cake in two and spread the frosting between and on top. This tastes like Charlotte Russe."
---Favorite Dishes: A Columbian Autograph Souvenir Cookery Book, Compiled by Carrie V. Shuman, facsimile of 1893 edition [University of Illinois Press:Urbana] 2001 (p. 172-3)

Cakes and Cookies Icing Without Eggs. Take 1 cup of granulated sugar and dampen with 1/4 cup of sweet milk. Stir till it boils. Let it boil 4 minutes without stirring, then remove it from the fire and set the dish in another of cold water, and add flavoring while cooling. Stir or beat it until it becomes a thick, creamy frosting. Sister Lizzie Chamberlin, Yale, Iowa.
---Recipes from The Inglenook Cookbook by The Sisters of the Brethren Church (1906)

Buttercreams

Butter-cream frostings (using butter, cream, confectioners [powdered] sugar and flavorings) began replacing traditional boiled icings in first few decades 20th century.

"Butter cream frostings. Strangely, these easy icings don't seem to have been in the repertoire of nineteenth-century American cooks, who chose to bind powdered sugar with raw egg white or yolk. Or to cook their frostings. In searching through several dozen cookbooks dating back to 1880, I found a butter frosting only in the 1915 Larkin Housewives' Cook Book...The Larkin Company, "Pure Food Specialists," sold chocolate, sugar, salt, assorted flavorings, and just about everything else the cook needed...Mrs. Fred W. Gurney of North Attleboro, Massachusetts, ...submitted her Mocha Frosting--the first butter cream I've been able to locate...A similar mocha frosting appears in the 1918 edition of "Fannie Farmer,"...By its 1923 edition, "Fannie" had added four more butter creams. And by the 1930s, these were the frostings cooks had come to rely on. For good reason. They were quick, versatile, and foolproof." ---American Century Cookbook: The Most Popular Recipes of the 20th Century, Jean Anderson [Clarkson Potter:New York] 1997 (p. 486)

The earliest recipe we find for a buttercream-type was printed in a company cookbook in 1908. Note: it is not called buttercream!

[1908]
"Mocha Filling and Frosting
6 tablespoons butter
2 cups confectioners' sugar
4 tablespoons dry cocoa
3 tablespoons liquid coffee
1 teaspoon vanilla extract.

Beat the butter to a cream, adding one cup of the sugar; then sift and add the cocoa. Beat well, put in the coffee and remaining sugar, and then the vanilla. Spread between and on top of layers of cake."
---Rumford Complete Cook Book, Lilly Haxworth Wallace [Rumford Chemical Works:Providence RI] 1908 (p. 155)
[NOTES: The Rumford company made baking powder. This recipe appears to be very similar to the one referenced by Ms. Anderson. Interesingly enough? It also comes from New England.]

[1923]
"Butter Cream.
2 1/2 pounds of icing sugar, 1 pound of good sweet butter, 2 ozs. corn starch, 5 eggwhites. Rub sugar and butter till light and creamy add starch and then the whites of eggs gradually, flavor with vanilla."
---Practical Cake-Art, Fred Bauer [Fred Bauer:Chicago IL] 1923 (recipe no. 49)

[1927]
"Butter Cream Icing
4 lbs. Confectioner's Sugar
1 pt. Cream (about)
1 lb. Sweet Butter
These ingredients are creamed up in a cake mixer until light. More butter may be added and less cream if desired, or a good lemon or vanilla custard may be added in the place of the cream or milk."
---Master Cake Baker, Cleve Carney [Calumet Baking Powder Company:Chicago IL] 1927 (p. 85) [NOTE: this books was originally published in Germany. Plate 55, "Butter Cream and Icing Flowers" offers glossy color illustration of 19 different flowers made from butter cream.]

The wedding cake first appeared in the late 1700s at aristocrats’ wedding ceremonies, according to “Wedding Cakes and Cultural History.” However, in 1840 Queen Victoria of England designed the wedding cake still seen today, a multi-layered cake with white icing. Originally, the whiteness of the wedding cake’s icing revealed the amount, quality and ultimately, expense, of sugar used. Use of pounds of sugar for cake topping signaled wealth.