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Custard Cake
Two cupfuls powdered sugar, one-half cupful sweet milk, six tablespoonfuls melted butter, one teaspoonful baking powder, two and one-half cupfuls flour; bake as for jelly cake, and when cool, add the following custard: One pint milk, three eggs, sugar and flour to suit the taste, and prepare as for boiled custard.
A plain butter cake baked in thin layers and filled with stovetop custard. Two things in the original need decoding: what "powdered sugar" meant in 1900, and how thick the custard should be, since the recipe leaves the sugar and flour entirely to you.
- Powdered sugarIn this period "powdered sugar" means finely ground granulated sugar, roughly what is sold now as superfine or caster sugar. It does not mean modern confectioners' sugar, which contains cornstarch and would give a dense, pasty crumb.
- Sweet milkPlain fresh whole milk, specified only to distinguish it from the soured or buttermilk that appears in soda-raised recipes. No substitution needed.
- No eggs in the batterAs printed, the cake layers contain no egg at all — 2 cups sugar, 2 1/2 cups flour, 1/2 cup milk and 6 tablespoons butter. That is a stiff batter that bakes short and crumbly rather than springy. Some other versions of custard cake do put eggs in the batter, so an omission here is possible, but the recipe can be made as written.
- "Bake as for jelly cake"Divide the batter between two or three shallow round tins and bake thin layers. The original gives no temperature; a moderate oven — roughly 375F for 12 to 18 minutes, until the centre springs back — suits thin layers. Jelly-cake layers are meant to be thin so the filling shows as a distinct stratum.
- Filling proportionsFor 1 pint milk and 3 eggs, a workable filling is about 1/3 cup sugar and 2 tablespoons flour; less flour gives a sauce rather than something that will stay between layers.
- Cooking the custardTemper the beaten eggs with hot milk, then cook over low heat or a water bath, stirring, until it coats a spoon — around 175 to 180F. The flour in this custard makes it more forgiving of heat than a plain boiled custard, but overheating will still curdle the eggs and break the filling. Cool it completely before it touches the cake, or the layers will turn to paste.
- Assembling and keepingSpread between fully cooled layers. An egg-and-milk filling is perishable: refrigerate the finished cake and eat it within a day or two.
- YieldTwo or three thin 8- or 9-inch layers, serving eight to ten.
"Custard cake" belongs to the large family of nineteenth-century layer cakes built the same way — thin rounds baked in shallow jelly-cake tins and stacked with whatever filling was to hand, so that the same batter appeared as jelly cake, lemon cake, cream cake or custard cake depending on the spread. The technique is often linked to two developments in the American kitchen: chemical baking powder, which made a reliable layer without prolonged beating or yeast, and inexpensive stamped tinware in matched sets. The vagueness here about the custard's sugar and flour is characteristic of the genre rather than careless; boiled custard was assumed to be a thing every cook already made by eye, much as a modern recipe might simply say "pastry cream."