Home › Supper › Filling for This Cake
Filling for This Cake
One cup of sweet cream or milk; let it come to a boil; then stir in one tablespoon of corn starch which has been previously wet with cold milk; sweeten to taste. Let it just boil up; remove from the fire and stir in one pint of pulverized hickorynut meats. Flavor to taste, and when partially cool, spread between each two layers.
A cornstarch-thickened cream filling carrying a large quantity of ground nuts. The two things that decide whether it works are cooking the starch long enough and grinding the nuts fine enough to spread.
- Boil the starch properly"Let it just boil up" is the minimum, not the ideal. Once the mixture bubbles, keep it at a simmer for a full minute, stirring, or the filling will taste chalky and may thin out as it stands.
- A pint of nut meatsThis is a volume measure of shelled nuts, roughly 2 cups, about 7-8 oz. "Pulverized" means ground to a fine meal in a mortar or nut mill; a food processor does it in short pulses, but stop before the nuts turn to butter.
- Hickory nutsShagbark and shellbark hickory meats were gathered rather than bought and are still hard to find shelled. Pecans are the closest substitute and belong to the same genus; black walnuts give a sharper, more assertive version.
- "Sweeten to taste"For one cup of cream, something in the range of 1/3 to 1/2 cup of sugar gives a filling in line with modern expectations. Dissolving it in the hot milk gives the smoothest result, though the recipe itself adds it after the starch.
- "Flavor to taste"Vanilla and lemon extract were the usual choices in books of this kind; add it off the heat so it does not cook away. A teaspoon is enough for this quantity.
- Cooling and spreadingPress plastic wrap directly onto the surface while it cools or a skin forms and the filling spreads in patches. Spread it while still slightly warm and loose; fully cold it stiffens and tears the cake.
- Yield and keepingEnough for two or three layers of an 8- or 9-inch cake. It is a dairy and starch filling with no preservative, so the assembled cake belongs in the refrigerator and is best within two days.
The title tells you this page is a satellite: it belonged to a layer cake printed elsewhere in the book, and the compiler saw no reason to repeat the name. Cornstarch fillings like this one spread quickly through American household books in the second half of the nineteenth century, once boxed cornstarch became a cheap pantry staple and gave cooks a way to thicken cream without eggs or long custard-watching. The hickory nuts place it firmly in North America, and most likely in the Ohio Valley or the Midwest, where shagbark and shellbark hickories grew. Shelling them is slow work for a small return, which is part of why a filling built on a full pint of the meats reads as a supper-table treat rather than everyday baking.