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Rich Sponge Cake
½ Cupful Snowdrift (scant) 1 Cupful Sugar Rind ½ Lemon 1 Tablespoonful Lemon Juice 3 Egg Yolks, Beaten Light ½ Cupfuls Flour ¼ Teaspoonful Salt ¼ Teaspoonful Soda 3 Egg Whites 3 Ounces (squares) Chocolate 1½ Cupful Milk 1 Egg 1 Cupful Sugar 2 Tablespoonfuls Snowdrift 11/8 Cupfuls Flour ⅛ Teaspoonful Salt Stir the Snowdrift and gradually work in the sugar, the lemon juice and rind, and then the egg yolks. Sift together the dry ingredients and add them alternately to the first mixture with the egg whites, beaten stiff. Transfer to small muffinpans lightly rubbed with Snowdrift, fill them half full, and bake from twenty-five to thirty minutes in a moderate oven, 350 degrees F. The cakes will have a delicious crust, similar to that of ladyfingers, and it is not necessary to ice them. If desired, the cake may be baked in a round, thin loaf, the top being sprinkled with shredded almonds or a little cocoanut before the mixture is baked.
A creamed shortening cake despite the name, and the printed ingredient list has clearly collided with a chocolate recipe from the neighbouring column. Read the method first and ignore anything it does not call for.
- The stray ingredientsThe chocolate, milk, whole egg, second cupful of sugar, two tablespoonfuls of Snowdrift and the 1â…› cupfuls of flour belong to another recipe that has run into this one. The cake as written uses only shortening, sugar, lemon rind and juice, three separated eggs, 1½ cups flour, salt and soda.
- FractionsThe printed page was checked: the cake takes ¼ teaspoonful salt and ¼ teaspoonful soda, and the sauce ⅛ teaspoonful salt, as the text now gives.
- SnowdriftA hydrogenated cottonseed-oil shortening sold by the Southern Cotton Oil Company, the whole reason this book exists. Any modern solid vegetable shortening works; butter gives better flavour but a denser, less ladyfinger-like crust, and 1½ cups is 12 oz / 340 g.
- "Scant"The instruction matters. Fill the cup just under the rim rather than packing it level; this is already a very high proportion of fat to 1½ cups of flour, and a heaped measure will make the cakes greasy.
- The hingeThere is no liquid apart from a tablespoon of lemon juice and the eggs. The stiff whites supply much of the lift and much of the moisture, so fold them in alternately with the flour in a light hand. Beat them in and the batter tightens and the cakes bake short and heavy.
- The sodaA quarter teaspoon of soda against one tablespoon of lemon juice is barely enough acid to neutralise it. Do not increase the soda or the crumb takes on a soapy edge.
- Oven and pansThe book gives the number itself: 350°F (175°C). Standard muffin cups filled halfway, 25 to 30 minutes; the recipe states no yield.
- The loaf variationBaked as a thin round loaf it will need longer than the muffin timing, and should be tested with a skewer rather than by the clock.
Snowdrift was a hydrogenated cottonseed-oil shortening from the Southern Cotton Oil Company, and this book is a manufacturer's promotional cookbook of the kind that flooded American kitchens in the 1910s and 1920s, when cottonseed oil moved from a soap-and-lamp byproduct to a kitchen staple and competed directly with lard and with Procter & Gamble's Crisco. This recipe names the product throughout, including where an ordinary cookbook would simply say "shortening" or "butter" he name "rich sponge cake" is loose by modern definition, since a true sponge carries no fat at all; here the beaten whites and the ladyfinger-like crust are doing the work of the association, and the claim that the cakes need no icing is exactly the sort of economy such books liked to advertise.