French Cake
Two cups sugar, two-thirds cup butter, four eggs, yolks and whites beaten separately, one cup sweet milk, three cups flour, three teaspoons baking powder.
This is a formula rather than a method: the book assumes a cook who already knows how to build a butter cake and only needs the proportions. Everything below fills in what the original leaves out.
- The hinge: separated eggsThe whites do real lifting alongside the baking powder (creaming the butter and sugar traps air too), so beat them to soft, glossy peaks and fold them in last, in two additions. Stirring them in knocks the air out and tends to give a denser, closer crumb.
- Order of workCream the butter with the sugar until pale, beat in the yolks, then alternate the flour (sifted with the baking powder) with the milk in three and two additions. Fold in the whites at the end.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh whole milk, named to distinguish it from the sour milk or buttermilk used in soda-risen cakes. Do not substitute buttermilk here; there is no soda to react with it.
- Butter measureTwo-thirds cup is about 10 tablespoons, 150 g. Have it properly softened, around 65F, or it will not hold air when creamed.
- FlourHousehold flour of this period was often softer and lower in protein than modern all-purpose, though it varied by region and mill. Cake flour, or all-purpose with two tablespoons per cup replaced by cornstarch, gives a crumb closer to the likely original.
- What is missingNo salt and no flavouring are listed. A half teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of vanilla or the grated rind of a lemon are consistent with period practice and improve it noticeably.
- Oven and pansThe recipe gives no oven setting; about 350F suits this batter. It should fill two 9-inch layers (25-30 minutes), a 9x13 pan (30-35 minutes), or a tube pan (45-55 minutes). Test with a skewer at the centre.
- Yield and servingRoughly 12 servings. A plain cake of this kind takes well to being cut in squares, or split and filled with jam, rather than heavily iced.
"French cake" in American cookbooks of this period rarely has anything to do with France; the word was a general mark of refinement, used as "French" dressing and "French" rolls were, and recipes carrying the name vary widely from book to book. The proportions here are close to the 1-2-3-4 style butter cake, though not exactly that formula, and such cakes were the workhorse of the late nineteenth-century kitchen once chemical baking powder became cheap and reliable, generally traced to the 1870s and 80s, and cooks no longer had to beat air into a dozen eggs by hand. That it appears under Supper reflects how the evening meal was taken in many households: a light spread of bread, cold meat, preserves and a plain cake, with the substantial cooking done at midday.