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Corn Starch Cake
Three-fourths of a cupful of butter, two cupfuls sugar, scant, one cup of sweet milk, one cup of corn starch, two cups of flour, two scant teaspoonfuls baking powder, and the whites of seven eggs. Sift together the corn starch, flour and baking powder; beat the butter and sugar together, and add alternately with the milk; and lastly the whites of the eggs beaten to a stiff froth; flavor to taste.
A white butter cake of the standard nineteenth-century pattern, lightened with cornstarch and raised on beaten whites. The original gives no pan, no oven and no time, so those are the gaps to fill.
- Sweet milkThis means ordinary fresh whole milk, specified to distinguish it from sour or buttermilk, which would have called for soda instead of baking powder. Use whole milk; skim gives a drier crumb.
- Cornstarch is the pointReplacing a third of the flour with cornstarch dilutes the gluten and gives the fine, tender, close crumb these cakes were prized for. Do not substitute more flour for it or you lose the whole character of the cake.
- OvenThe original gives no oven direction. 350F works for a cake of this type; a white cake scorches visibly, so err on the cool side rather than the hot.
- Pan and timeThe batter suits two 9-inch round layers (about 25-30 minutes) or a 10-inch tube pan (about 50-60 minutes). Test with a skewer at the centre.
- AlternatingThe instruction to add the dry mixture and milk alternately to the creamed butter and sugar still holds, and matters: beginning and ending with the dry mixture keeps the batter from separating.
- The whitesBeat to a stiff froth, then fold in by hand in two or three additions. Stirring them through with a machine collapses the foam and the cake bakes heavy, since the whites are doing a good part of the lifting.
- Baking powderTwo scant teaspoons is workable for modern double-acting powder with this quantity of flour, especially since the whites supply much of the lift. Period powders varied in strength and standardisation, so there is no need to increase it.
- Flavor to tasteVanilla, lemon, or bitter-almond extract, about a teaspoon, are all plausible period choices. Almond is often seen with white cakes; a little goes far.
- Yield and the yolksServes 12 to 16. Seven yolks left over will make a custard, a lemon curd, or a gold cake; silver and gold cake recipes are often found paired in cookbooks of the period.
Cornstarch cake belongs to the family of "silver" or "white" cakes that spread through American cookbooks after commercial cornstarch became a cheap pantry staple in the second half of the nineteenth century; the starch makers themselves promoted such recipes on package labels and in small pamphlets, which may be part of the reason the formula turns up in so many household books with so little variation. Using only the whites produced a strikingly pale crumb at a time when whiteness in baking signalled refinement and expensive, well-bolted flour, and the leftover yolks went straight into a companion gold cake or a boiled custard, so nothing was wasted.