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Hickory-Nut Cake
Take a half cupful of butter, two cupfuls of sugar and four eggs beaten separately; then three cupfuls of flour, one-half cupful of sweet milk, two teaspoonfuls of baking powder, two cupfuls of hickory-nut meats cut fine, with one teaspoonful extract vanilla.
XI, Gingerbread and Other "Homely" Cakes.
A plain butter cake carrying an unusually heavy load of nuts, written in the shorthand of a period when every cook knew the creaming method without being told. The stray line "XI, Gingerbread and Other 'Homely' Cakes" is a running chapter head from the book, not part of the recipe.
- Assemble it in the usual orderCream the butter with the sugar, beat in the egg yolks, then add the flour sifted with the baking powder alternately with the milk. Fold in the stiffly beaten whites last, with the nuts and vanilla. Beating the eggs separately helps the cake carry two cupfuls of nuts, though the two teaspoonfuls of baking powder do most of the raising.
- Sweet milkFresh whole milk, specified to distinguish it from the soured milk or buttermilk used in soda-leavened cakes. Ordinary whole milk is the direct equivalent.
- Hickory nutsShagbark hickory is still harvested in the American Midwest and East but is rarely sold shelled; the meats are small, oily and hard to extract. Pecans are the closest supermarket stand-in and belong to the same genus, though they are sweeter and less resinous.
- Coat the nutsTwo cupfuls of finely cut nuts is a great deal of weight for the batter to hold. Toss them with a spoonful of the measured flour before folding them in so they do not sink to the bottom.
- FlourPeriod recipes assume a softer, lower-protein flour than modern all-purpose. Cake flour gives a tenderer crumb; if using all-purpose, measure by spooning into the cup rather than scooping.
- Oven and panThe book leaves the heat unstated. As a modern equivalent, bake at 350F. The batter fills two 9-inch round layers (30-35 minutes) or one tube pan (about an hour); test with a straw or skewer.
- YieldRoughly a three-pound cake, twelve to sixteen servings. It is rich enough to serve unfrosted, though a boiled white icing was a common finish for nut cakes of the period.
Hickory-nut cake belongs to a family of American nut cakes that flourished wherever the tree grew wild, which meant most of the eastern and central states. Shagbark hickory nuts were gathered rather than bought, and cracking them was slow work, often said to have been done of an evening by the fire, so a cake calling for two cupfuls of meats represented real labor rather than expense. That is why such cakes turn up in books like this one under the heading of "homely" cakes: the ingredient cost nothing but the picking, and the recipe is otherwise a plain butter cake. Commercial baking seems never to have taken up hickory to any great extent, partly because the shells resist mechanical cracking and the kernels are lodged in tight chambers, and the pecan, an easier-shelling relative, displaced it in printed recipes over the twentieth century.