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Sponge Cake (Ten eggs eight ounces flour)
Ten eggs, eight ounces flour, one pound granulated sugar, the juice and rind of one lemon, a small pinch of salt; sift and heat, the flour before putting in the oven to bake.
A bare-bones ingredient list of the sort written for cooks who already knew how a sponge cake was built. The proportions are sound; the method has to be supplied.
- The hinge: air is the only leaveningThere is no baking powder or soda here, so every bit of rise comes from beaten egg. Whip the yolks with the sugar until pale and ribboning, beat the whites with the salt to firm but not dry peaks, and fold rather than stir — a deflated batter bakes into a dense yellow slab.
- Weights in modern measuresEight ounces of flour is about 2 cups sifted; a pound of granulated sugar is about 2¼ cups. Ten large eggs come to roughly 1 lb 4 oz in the shell, so this is a large cake — bake in a 10-inch tube pan or two 9-inch rounds.
- Warming the flourHeating the sifted flour, gently and briefly, dries it and takes the chill off so it disperses into the foam with fewer folds. A few minutes in a low oven on a sheet pan is enough; it should be barely warm to the hand, not toasted.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe specifies none. A modern working range for a sponge this size is 325–350F; expect roughly 45–55 minutes in a tube pan, 25–30 in shallow rounds, with the cake done when it springs back and the sides begin to shrink from the pan.
- LemonGrate the zest into the sugar so the oils are released, and add the juice to the yolk mixture rather than to the whites, where the added liquid is likelier to loosen the foam. One lemon gives about 2–3 tablespoons of juice and about a tablespoon of zest.
- Pan preparation and coolingDo not grease the sides — a sponge needs to climb. Cool the cake upside down in its pan so the crumb sets before gravity compresses it.
- YieldEnough for 12 to 16 slices. It keeps a day or two well wrapped, and is good sliced thin with fruit or a spoonful of cream.
Sponge cakes leavened by egg alone were a set piece of the nineteenth-century supper table, and a tall, fine-grained sponge showed off a cook's skill at the whisk. Recipes of this kind often circulated as ratios rather than methods — ten eggs, eight ounces flour, a pound of sugar — on the assumption that the reader knew to separate, whip and fold. The heavy weight of sugar relative to flour is characteristic of the period and does real structural work, stabilising the beaten yolks and keeping the crumb moist without butter, which is why cakes like this are sometimes distinguished from the butter-enriched pound cake. Lemon was a very common flavouring, both for its own sake and because rind and juice cut the eggy note an unbuttered batter can carry.