Home › Supper › Lemon Cake (Two and one-half cups sugar)
Lemon Cake (Two and one-half cups sugar)
Two and one-half cups sugar, one cup butter (scant,) five eggs, two-thirds cup milk, one teaspoon soda, four cups flour, one large lemon or two small ones, the rind of one and the juice of two, two teaspoons cream tarter; sift cream tarter with the flour. Dissolve soda with one tablespoonful of hot water.
A big 1-2-3-4-style butter cake with no method, no pan and no oven given — everything after the ingredient list was assumed knowledge. Here is what the cook of the day would have supplied.
- Method the list impliesCream the butter and sugar, beat in the eggs one at a time, then add the sifted flour and cream of tartar alternately with the milk. The dissolved soda and the lemon rind and juice go in last, and the batter should reach the oven promptly once the soda is in.
- "Cream tarter"Cream of tartar. Sifted with the flour and reacting with the soda, it is the chemical leavening here: 1 teaspoon soda to 2 teaspoons cream of tartar is the classic pre-baking-powder pairing, roughly equivalent to three or four teaspoons of modern baking powder.
- OvenNone is stated. A moderate oven, 350F, suits a cake this rich.
- Pan and timeThe quantities make a large cake — about 4 cups flour and 2 1/2 cups sugar. Two 9-inch loaf pans or a 10-inch tube pan, greased and lined, will take 50 to 65 minutes; test with a skewer in the center. Serves 12 to 16.
- Scant cup of butterA scant cup means just under a full cup: about 200g, or a little under two sticks. Unsalted butter with a scant 1/2 teaspoon of salt added to the flour is closer to the salted butter of the period.
- FlourNineteenth-century household flour was often softer than modern all-purpose. Measure by spooning into the cup and leveling (about 480g total), or swap in cake flour for a lighter crumb; scooping packed cups will give you a dry, heavy cake.
- LemonRind of one, juice of two — grate the zest into the sugar before creaming so the oils are released, and use only the yellow. This is the whole flavoring; there is no extract behind it, so a tired lemon shows.
- Hot water for the sodaOne tablespoon of hot water dissolves the soda so it disperses evenly rather than leaving bitter speckles. Add it and the lemon juice at the very end, since the acid starts the reaction immediately.
This belongs to the enormous family of American "cup cakes" built on the 1-2-3-4 proportion — one part butter, two sugar, three flour, four eggs — a formula that survived in print for well over a century because it could be carried in the head without scales. The leavening dates it: cream of tartar sifted into the flour with soda dissolved separately was the standard chemical raiser in home kitchens before boxed baking powder became cheap and reliable in the later nineteenth century, and recipes clung to the two-jar method long after. Lemon was one of a number of flavorings available to a household, zest and juice doing the work now handled by bottled extract.