Bake 3 layers of sponge-cake; then mix some jelly with wine and spread between the layers and over the top and sides. Cover with a rich chocolate icing, flavored with vanilla.
November 10 — No. 10
English
An assembly recipe rather than a from-scratch one: the book assumes you already have a sponge-cake formula and an icing you trust, and tells you only how to put them together. The points below fill in what the original leaves unsaid.
- What "3 layers of sponge-cake" meansBake a plain sponge in three 8- or 9-inch pans, or bake two deeper layers and split them. Period sponges are whole-egg or separated-egg and often rely largely on beaten egg for lift, though many American receipts of the era also add baking powder; the result is generally drier and firmer than a modern butter cake, which helps it stand up to a wet filling.
- Oven heatThe recipe gives no oven direction at all. In a modern oven a shallow sponge layer bakes at about 350F for 20-25 minutes. Too hot and the crust sets before the batter has risen; too cool and the foam collapses before it sets.
- The jelly and wine fillingUse a firm fruit jelly - currant, quince or apple - and beat in sherry, Madeira or port a little at a time. Stop while the jelly still mounds on the spoon; slackened much further it will run out of the sides under the weight of the cake.
- Jelly on the sides is a mask, not a coatJelly on the sides -- The thin layer over the top and sides sits under the icing and can act much as a crumb coat does now, holding loose crumbs down, though the recipe says nothing about its purpose. Chill the coated cake until the jelly is tacky rather than wet, then ice.
- "Rich chocolate icing"The recipe leaves the formula entirely to the cook. A period-appropriate version would be confectioners' sugar, melted chocolate, butter and cream or hot water, beaten smooth and spread while just warm - not a modern ganache. Add the vanilla off the heat so it does not cook away.
- Chocolate has changedBaking chocolate then was unsweetened and coarser than today's couverture, and cocoa-based icings were also in use. Either works; if you use bittersweet chocolate, cut the sugar in the icing accordingly.
- YieldA three-layer 8-inch cake serves 10 to 12. It cuts cleanest cold, with a thin knife wiped between slices, since the wine-loosened jelly stays soft.
Books like this one sold themselves on variety - a dish a day, each tagged with a nationality, as the neighbouring German and Dutch entries show - and the tags were often looser than they look. What may have made this cake "English" to an American compiler is the sponge-and-jam construction: a plain sponge split and filled with preserves is a staple of English tea baking, and the wine-slackened jelly recalls trifle, in which wine-soaked sponge or biscuit is documented from the eighteenth century, with jam layers becoming common later. The chocolate icing looks like the American element. Jelly cake in various forms appears often in nineteenth-century American receipt books; put-up jelly was something many households had on hand, and a sponge baked in thin layers cooked fast and required no creaming of butter by hand.