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Queen Cakes
1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 cup Crisco, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 3 eggs, 1/4 cup currants, 1/4 cup glace cherries (cut in dice), grate nutmeg, thin rind 1/2 lemon (chopped finely), juice 1 lemon, 1 cup flour, 4 tablespoons rice flour, and 1 teaspoon baking powder. Put Crisco and sugar in basin and work with wooden spoon to cream, add salt and eggs 1 by 1, and beat mixture thoroughly. Mix in separate basin fruit, lemon rind, flours and baking powder. Stir this into other mixture, add nutmeg, and strained lemon juice. Stir mixture several minutes longer. Have ready Criscoed gem tins, three-parts fill them with mixture and bake in fairly hot oven from 20 to 25 minutes. Unmold cakes and place on sieve to cool. Cakes may be coated with chocolate or boiled frosting.
A Crisco-era version of an English small cake, plain in method but with a few vessels and terms that need translating.
- Gem tinsThese are the individual cast-iron or tin cups that preceded the modern muffin pan; a muffin tin is the nearest equivalent, though gem cups often ran smaller, so filling them three-parts full may give more than twelve cakes.
- "Fairly hot oven"Roughly 375-400F, though period oven-heat tables vary. At that heat 20-25 minutes is right for muffin-sized cakes; test with a skewer at 18 minutes, since the fruit makes the centre look wetter than it is.
- CriscoThe book was written to sell it, and it is still on shelves, though reformulated without trans fats. An equal weight of softened unsalted butter creams just as well and tastes better; expect a slightly firmer crumb.
- Rice flourThe four tablespoons are not filler. Rice flour has no gluten and shortens the crumb, giving a drier, sandier bite. Plain flour substituted for it will produce a softer, more ordinary cupcake.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants. Rinse and dry them if they are dusty, and toss them with a spoonful of the measured flour so they do not sink.
- Nutmeg"Grate nutmeg" means grate some, quantity unstated. About a quarter teaspoon freshly grated suits this amount of batter; pre-ground is noticeably flatter.
- Cooling on a sieveA wire rack. Unmold while still warm so the bottoms do not steam and soften in the tin.
Queen cakes are an English small cake of long standing, current by the eighteenth century as a rich butter-and-currant batter baked in individual patty pans, often heart-shaped ones; the name is glossed "as fit for a queen", though that etymology is traditional rather than documented. The rice flour and dried currants here are inherited straight from that British line; what is new is the Crisco. This book belongs to the run of cookbooks Procter & Gamble commissioned after introducing the hydrogenated vegetable shortening in 1911, in which established recipes were rewritten with the new fat in place of butter or lard to prove it could do everything they did. Three eggs to a cup of flour is indeed the structural backbone of this batter.