Orange Cake
Two cups sugar, one-half cup of water, two and one-fourth cups flour, two teaspoons baking powder, yolks of five eggs and whites of two, juice and grated rind of one orange, bake in three jelly pans.
A fatless layer cake in the mold of an American sponge or "orange sunshine" cake, written in the shorthand of a book that assumed its reader had made a dozen like it. The method is left out entirely, so the sequence below is the part worth attention.
- The hinge: air, not fatThere is no butter, oil or milk here, so the only lift comes from beaten eggs and baking powder. Beat the five yolks with the sugar until thick and pale, add water and orange juice and rind, fold in the sifted flour and baking powder, then fold in the two whites beaten to soft peaks last. Stirring the whites in flatly gives a tough, low cake.
- Jelly pansRound tin layer pans about 8 to 9 inches across and an inch to an inch and a half deep. Three modern 8-inch round cake pans work; grease and flour them, or line the bottoms with parchment.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives none. Around 350F suits thin layers of this kind; they will be done in 15 to 20 minutes, when the tops spring back and the edges pull from the tin.
- Baking powderTwo teaspoons in 2 1/4 cups flour is on the light side by modern standards because the eggs are doing much of the work. Use double-acting powder and make sure it is fresh; old powder in a fatless batter produces a flat, rubbery layer.
- The orangeFigure on about 1/4 to 1/3 cup juice and a packed tablespoon of zest from one orange; grate the rind into the sugar first so the oils are drawn out.
- The three spare whitesOnly two of the five whites are used, leaving three over. Leftover whites were commonly turned into a frosting beaten with sifted sugar and juice, though this recipe gives no filling or icing instruction of its own.
- YieldThree thin layers, filled and stacked, serving 10 to 12.
Orange cake belongs to the late nineteenth-century family of fatless "sunshine" and sponge cakes that flourished once chemical baking powder became cheap and reliable in American kitchens, and once Florida and California citrus reached northern grocers by rail through the winter. Its placement under Supper is a reminder that the evening meal in many households of the period was the lighter one, tea with bread, cold meat and a cut cake, while dinner at midday carried the roast.