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Madeira Nut Drop Cake
One-half pound sugar, scant, one-half pound butter, scant, one good half pound flour, three eggs, one-half pint nuts cut in small pieces. Drop off a spoon in small cakes, or make in patty pans; then before putting in the oven, place one-half of an English wal nut on each cake. They are also very nice frosted, and then place the nut on the frosting instead of doing so first. Both ways are good.
A plain creamed-butter drop cookie with no leavening and no liquid beyond the eggs, which makes the dough stiff and the handling straightforward. The name refers to the nut, not to the wine.
- Madeira nut means walnut"Madeira nut" was a nineteenth-century American name for the common English walnut, Juglans regia; the name is usually explained by nuts reaching the United States by way of Madeira and the Atlantic trade, though that account is traditional rather than documented. The recipe supports the identification by calling for English walnut halves on top.
- Weights to volumesHalf a pound of sugar is about 1 1/8 cups granulated; "scant" means level to slightly under. Half a pound of butter is two sticks. A "good half pound" of flour is roughly 2 cups, and the word good signals a generous measure, so start at 2 cups and add a little more only if the dough will not hold a shape on the spoon.
- Half a pint of nutsThat is 1 cup of chopped walnut meats, measured after chopping. Keep the pieces small, as directed, or the cakes will not drop cleanly.
- No leavening, and that is deliberateThere is no soda, baking powder or salt in the original. Expect a dense, short, shortbread-like cake rather than a puffed cookie. A quarter teaspoon of salt is a reasonable modern addition if your butter is unsalted; leavening would change the texture the recipe is aiming for.
- Patty pansSmall shallow tart or bun tins, closest today to a mini-muffin pan. Filled that way the cakes take longer than dropped ones and come out taller and softer.
- OvenNo temperature is given. Bake at 350F: dropped cakes 10 to 14 minutes until the edges are just coloured, patty pans 15 to 18. The high butter proportion means they scorch on the bottom quickly at anything hotter.
- The walnut on topPress the half nut in firmly before baking or it will slide off the spreading dough. If you frost instead, cool the cakes completely first, use a simple confectioners' sugar icing, and set the nut while the icing is still wet.
- YieldAbout three dozen small dropped cakes, or two dozen from patty pans.
The walnut was widely known in American kitchens as the Madeira nut well into the late nineteenth century, a name usually explained by the Atlantic shipping routes that carried Mediterranean and Iberian produce westward, though that derivation is traditional rather than documented; cookbooks of the period use "Madeira nut," "English walnut" and simply "walnut" more or less interchangeably, as this recipe does in moving from its title to its instructions. The proportions -- near-equal weights of butter, sugar and flour, with eggs the only lightening -- are close to the pound-cake formula scaled down and dropped rather than baked in a loaf, though here the flour is deliberately the heavier measure and the eggs fall well short of a matching weight.