Silver Cake
The whites of eight eggs, one cup butter, two cups sugar, three cups flour, one-half cup of sweet milk, one teaspoon cream tartar, one-half teaspoon soda; flavor with lemon or bitter almonds.
A plain white butter cake of the sort every 19th-century household kept in rotation. The original gives no pan, no oven and no method, all of which were assumed knowledge; here is what it takes for granted.
- The hinge: how the whites go inCream the butter and sugar, add the milk and flour alternately, then fold in the beaten whites last. Fold rather than stir them in; whites worked in hard lose their air and the crumb suffers.
- Cup sizes and eight whitesTaking the cup as the usual half-pint, 8 fl oz, this is 1 cup (2 sticks, 8 oz) butter, about 14 oz sugar, about 13 oz flour. Eight large egg whites come to roughly 1 cup; measuring the whites by volume is the safer course, as egg sizes vary.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh unsoured milk, specified because sour milk was the other thing in the pantry and would change how the soda behaves. Whole milk.
- Cream of tartar and sodaThis is baking powder assembled in the bowl, the ordinary arrangement before commercial powders were trusted. One teaspoon cream of tartar with half a teaspoon soda works out to roughly 2 teaspoons of modern baking powder if you would rather use it; sift whichever you choose with the flour.
- SaltNone is listed, as the butter was usually salted. With unsalted butter add 1/2 teaspoon fine salt to the flour.
- Oven and panThe recipe names no oven and no pan. 350F suits it: two 8-inch layers take 25 to 30 minutes; a 9x5 loaf or tube pan 45 to 55 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean and the top springs back.
- Bitter almondsDo not flavor this with actual bitter almond kernels or old-style essence of bitter almonds, which carries hydrocyanic acid. The almond extract sold today is flavored with benzaldehyde and is safe; use 1/2 teaspoon of it, or the grated zest of a lemon with 1/2 teaspoon lemon extract.
- YieldClose to 3 lb of batter, enough for a two-layer 8-inch cake serving 10 to 12. It keeps better than a sponge and slices best the day after baking.
Silver cake is half of a pair. Nineteenth-century American cookbooks often print it near gold cake, which uses the eight yolks left over, so that a single set of eggs produced two cakes and nothing was wasted. The whiteness was the point, and finely bolted white flour, cheaper refined sugar and chemical leavening from cream of tartar and soda together made a pale, fine-grained cake easier to achieve than before. A white-iced cake of this kind was sometimes pressed into service as bride's cake in households that could not afford a fruited one.