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Jam Cake
Cream 2/3 cup Crisco with 1 cup sugar, add 3 well beaten eggs, 1/2 cup sour cream, 1 teaspoon soda, 2 cups flour, 1/2 glass strawberry preserves, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon each cloves, 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg, and 1/2 teaspoon salt, mix and bake in layers. Put strawberry preserves between layers, and white icing on top.
A spice-and-preserve layer cake from a book written to sell shortening, so the fat is specified by brand and the oven is not specified at all. A few of the measurements need translating before you start.
- "1/2 glass" of preservesA jelly glass of the period held roughly 8 ounces, so half a glass is about 1/2 cup, or 4 to 5 ounces of strawberry preserves in the batter. You will want a similar amount again for spreading between the layers.
- CriscoStill on the shelf and essentially the same product in function, though reformulated over the years to remove partially hydrogenated oil. Any solid vegetable shortening works; the same weight of softened unsalted butter gives better flavour, at the cost of a slightly firmer crumb.
- Soda and sour creamThere is no baking powder here. The teaspoon of soda is neutralised by the acid in the sour cream, and the jam adds a little more. Sift the soda through the flour rather than dumping it in, or you will get soapy brown streaks.
- Sour cream then and nowEarly-1900s sour cream was cream soured naturally and was thinner and sharper than the modern cultured product. Full-fat commercial sour cream is the closest match; thin it with a spoonful of buttermilk if the batter seems stiff.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Bake at 350F for 25 to 30 minutes in two 9-inch pans, until a tester comes out clean and the edges pull from the sides.
- Mixing orderTaken literally the method adds everything at once. Better results come from creaming fat and sugar, beating in the eggs, then alternating the sifted dry ingredients with the sour cream and folding the preserves in last so the fruit stays in streaks.
- White icingIn books of this period this usually means boiled icing: a hot sugar syrup beaten into whipped egg whites. A plain confectioners' sugar glaze is a modern substitute if you would rather not cook a syrup to the soft-ball stage.
- YieldThe recipe does not say how many layers; two 9-inch pans will serve about 10 to 12. The cake keeps well for several days wrapped, and the spices are more pronounced on the second day.
Jam cake belongs to the American South, particularly Kentucky and Tennessee, where a spiced butter cake enriched with put-up fruit was a standard holiday cake; blackberry jam is the more usual choice, with strawberry a variation. The recipe's logic is thrift as much as flavour: preserves supplied sweetness, moisture and acid to work with the soda at a time when a cook's fruit was more likely to come from her own jars than a shop. That it calls for Crisco by name suggests a promotional origin: Procter & Gamble issued recipe books from the 1910s onward to show that their new vegetable shortening could do what butter and lard did. No oven temperature is given, which was usual in the era of wood and coal ranges, where the heat was left to the cook's judgement.