White Cake
Cream together the sugar and Snowdrift and add the vanilla. When light and fluffy, add a tablespoonful or two of the dry ingredients, sifted together, then a little milk. Add these alternately until all are in, and then fold in the egg whites, beaten stiff. Transfer to three mediumsized layer-cake pans, which have been rubbed lightly with Snowdrift, and bake about thirty-five minutes in a hot oven, 375 degrees F. Put together with orange or chocolate frosting. 1/2 Cupful Snowdrift. 1 1/3 Cupfuls Sugar. 1 1/4 Teaspoonfuls Vanilla. 3 Cupfuls Flour. 1/4 Teaspoonful Salt. 4 Teaspoonfuls Baking Powder. 1 Cupful Milk. 4 Egg Whites.
This is a promotional recipe from a shortening manufacturer, and like most of the genre it prints the method on the assumption that the ingredient table sits directly above it. Read it as a technique note rather than a complete formula.
- No quantities givenThe verbatim text names sugar, Snowdrift, vanilla, dry ingredients, milk and egg whites but no amounts. Any figures would be invention on our part; use the proportions from a standard white layer cake (roughly 1 cup fat, 2 cups sugar, 3 cups flour, 1 cup milk, 6 egg whites) if you want to reconstruct it.
- SnowdriftA cottonseed-oil shortening sold in tins by the Southern Cotton Oil Company from the early twentieth century, later a hydrogenated fat. Modern vegetable shortening substitutes volume for volume. Butter will also work but adds water and flavour, and the crumb will be less white and less tender.
- "Hot oven, 375 degrees"The book's own number is the one to trust, though by later convention 375F is moderately hot rather than hot. Set the oven to 350-375F for layers this size.
- Thirty-five minutes is too longThirty-five minutes -- Long for three thin layers, though the book gives it. Medium layer-cake pans of the period were likely around 8 to 9 inches; start testing with a skewer at about 20 minutes and be ready for the layers to be done well before the stated time.
- Greasing the pans"Rubbed lightly with Snowdrift" alone leaves a white cake prone to sticking. Grease and flour, or line the bases with parchment.
- Alternating additionsBegin and end with the flour mixture and beat only until each addition disappears. Overworking after the milk goes in develops gluten and gives a tough, tunnelled crumb.
- Folding the whitesStiff-beaten whites are the only leavening mentioned here beyond whatever baking powder was in the omitted ingredient list. Fold in thirds with a large spoon and stop while a few streaks remain; get the batter into the pans at once.
- YieldA three-layer cake of this size serves roughly 10 to 12. The recipe says only to 'put together' the layers with orange or chocolate frosting; whether the top was also covered is not stated.
A New Snowdrift Cook Book belongs to a large family of American cookbooks published not by cooks but by manufacturers: Snowdrift was a cottonseed-oil shortening from the Southern Cotton Oil Company, and every recipe in the book exists to put the tin on the kitchen shelf. Cottonseed oil had been a cheap by-product of the Southern cotton crop before food chemists learned to hydrogenate it into a solid white fat that behaved like lard but kept better, and the recipe booklets that followed had to teach housewives that this unfamiliar substance could be creamed, fried in and rubbed into pans. A white cake made the argument neatly: the fat is colourless and nearly flavourless, so with only egg whites in the batter the crumb comes out genuinely white, something butter cannot manage. Layer cakes built in three tiers were a familiar form of American company cake, and the choice offered here between orange and chocolate reflects how such a cake was expected to be dressed for whatever occasion it met.