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Sponge Cake
Take one pound of granulated sugar beaten with the yolks of ten eggs. Grate into this the yellow rind of two lemons, and add the juice of one; then beat the whites of the ten eggs separately, very light, and add the same, stirring lightly together. To this add three-fourths of a pound of flour, and stir lightly without beating. This will make three good-sized loaves. Care must be taken in baking not to put the pans in too hot an oven.
A true foam cake: no butter, no baking powder, nothing lifting it but ten eggs and the air you beat into them. The instructions are terse because the technique was assumed, so here is what the terseness hides.
- The hinge: fold, never beatOnce the whites go in, every stroke costs you volume. Sift the flour over the surface in three additions and cut through with a spatula or a flat whisk until just combined; there is no leavening to rescue a deflated batter.
- Weights in cupsOne pound of granulated sugar is about 2 1/4 cups. Three-quarters of a pound of flour is about 3 cups sifted all-purpose, but weigh it if you can — this batter has no margin for a heavy-handed scoop.
- Beat the yolks properly"Beaten with the yolks" is generally taken to mean beaten to the ribbon stage: pale, thick, and falling from the beater in a broad band. With a stand mixer this takes several minutes on high. Under-beaten yolks tend to give a dense, damp layer at the bottom of the loaf.
- "Not too hot an oven"The recipe gives no temperature. A moderate oven, in the region of 325°F and no hotter than 350°F, suits a foam cake: too hot and the crust sets before the egg foam has finished expanding, and the cake cracks and sinks.
- PansUse ungreased pans, or line only the bottoms. Sponge batter needs to grip the sides as it climbs; a greased tin gives a squat cake. The recipe expects three loaf pans; a 10-inch tube pan is a modern alternative.
- TimingExpect 45 to 55 minutes for loaves at 325°F, a little longer in a tube pan. Done when the top springs back and a skewer comes out clean; a nearly-baked sponge will still smell faintly of raw egg.
- CoolingInvert the pans and let the cakes cool upside down before turning out. Warm sponge collapses under its own weight.
- YieldHalving the recipe — five eggs, 8 oz sugar, 6 oz flour, the rind of one lemon and the juice of half — makes a smaller batch that is easier to fold well.
Sponge cake belongs to the family of cakes raised entirely by egg, a technique that predates chemical leavening and is generally traced to English and American kitchens through the eighteenth-century "biscuit" and Savoy cake traditions. Its persistence into a collection like this one is partly economic — sugar, eggs, flour and a lemon, with no butter at all — and partly a matter of pride, since a well-risen sponge advertised a cook who could beat eggs to the right stage by hand and judge an oven without a thermometer. The lemon rind and juice flavor the cake, the juice going into the yolks while the whites are beaten separately. Recipes of this kind are often given by weight rather than cup measure, said to be a holdover from the older pound-cake arithmetic in which ingredients were reckoned against each other rather than against a measuring vessel.