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The White Part
One cup of white sugar, half a cup of butter, half a cup of sweet milk, one cup and a half of flour, two teaspoonfuls of baking powder, the whites of three eggs, beaten to a stiff froth, and added last, one teaspoonful of lemon extract; bake the white part in two layers, and the dark in one; put the layers together with currant jelly, having the dark one in the center; this makes one large loaf; frost with boiled frosting.
This is the white half of a two-part layer cake — the batter for two pale layers that sandwich a dark spice or chocolate layer, sold under names like ribbon or marble loaf. The instructions assume you have the dark batter recipe alongside it and know how a cake behaves; here is what the page leaves unsaid.
- Fold, do not stirThe whites go in last for a reason. Fold them into the finished batter in two or three additions with a light hand; beating them in flattens the froth and gives a tighter, closer crumb.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given; cooks judged the heat of their own ranges, which had no thermostat and rarely a reliable gauge. 350F suits this batter. Two 8- or 9-inch layers from this quantity will be thin and quick — check at 18 minutes, expect 20 to 25.
- Cups and butterThe cup here is close enough to the modern 8-ounce cup to use directly. Half a cup of butter is one stick, 4 ounces, and it should be soft enough to cream properly with the sugar before the milk and flour go in.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh whole milk, named to distinguish it from the soured or buttermilk that older recipes used with saleratus. Any whole milk works; the recipe is leavened with baking powder and needs no acid.
- Baking powderTwo teaspoons to a cup and a half of flour is on the generous side by modern standards, and period powders were often single-acting. Modern double-acting powder at a teaspoon and a half should still give ample rise, with less aftertaste.
- Lemon extractA full teaspoon of extract in a small cake is assertive; it presumably serves to make the white layers taste distinct from the dark one. Reduce to half a teaspoon if you want the jelly to lead.
- AssemblyDark layer in the middle, currant jelly between. Warm and stir the jelly briefly so it spreads without tearing the crumb, and use it thinly; a thick layer will slide when the cake is cut.
- Boiled frostingThe classic finish: a hot sugar syrup at about 240F beaten into stiff egg whites until it holds a peak. It sets with a crisp shell over a marshmallow interior and must be spread quickly, before it stiffens in the bowl.
- YieldThe recipe calls it one large loaf, here a three-layer cake. Best eaten on the day it is frosted.
Cakes built from a pale batter and a dark one baked separately and stacked were a staple of late-nineteenth-century American cookbooks, appearing as ribbon cake and often printed as neighbouring entries for "the white part" and "the dark part". The split is commonly said to have had a practical side: the white batter used only the whites of the eggs, while the dark batter, spiced and darkened with molasses or chocolate, could take the yolks. Commercial baking powders spread through American kitchens from the 1860s onward, displacing the earlier saleratus-and-sour-milk method, which could brown a cake and leave it faintly soapy if the proportions slipped.