Gold Cake
5г Yolks of eight eggs, one-half cup butter, two cups sugar, three cups of flour, one half cup of sweet milk, one teaspoon cream tartar, one-half teaspoon soda; flavor with vanilla.
A plain butter cake leaning on egg yolks for colour and richness. The original assumes you know the creaming method, so the order of work is left to the cook.
- Method, since none is givenCream the butter with the sugar, beat in the yolks until pale and thick, then add the dry ingredients alternately with the milk. Overworking after the flour goes in gives a tough, tunnelled crumb.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh unsoured milk, specified because many kitchens of the period also kept buttermilk or clabber on hand. Whole milk is the right substitute.
- Cream of tartar and sodaTogether these are a homemade baking powder, roughly equivalent to about 2 teaspoons of modern double-acting powder. Because they react on contact with the liquid, get the batter into the pan and into the oven promptly.
- OvenThe recipe gives no oven direction. A moderate oven, around 350F, suits this batter; too fast a heat will give a domed, cracked top.
- Pan and timeThe quantity fills two 9-inch round layers or one large tube pan. Layers take 25 to 30 minutes, a tube pan 45 to 55, until a skewer comes out clean.
- Butter quantityHalf a cup of butter to two cups of sugar and three cups of flour is lean by current standards; the eight yolks add some further fat and richness. Expect a firm, close-grained cake rather than a plush one.
- The eight whitesNothing here uses them. They would commonly have gone into a Silver Cake, meringue or frosting.
- YieldAbout 12 to 16 slices. Vanilla is the only flavouring called for; a teaspoon is the usual measure for this size of batter.
Gold cake and silver cake were a matched pair in nineteenth-century American baking, and the pairing was largely a matter of thrift: a cook who used eight yolks for one cake had eight whites left to use for another. The two are sometimes found sliced and arranged in alternating layers or checkerboards, though that presentation is more common in later sources than in the earliest gold and silver cake recipes.