White Cake
Whites of four eggs, one coffee-cup white sugar, one-half coffee cup butter, one-half coffee-cup milk, two coffee-cups flour, two teaspoonfuls baking powder, and lemon extract.
An ingredient list with no method, which was normal in books written for cooks who already knew how a butter cake goes together. The proportions are sound; everything else has to be supplied.
- The coffee-cupNineteenth-century cup measures were not standardised, and books differ: the coffee cup is usually reckoned at about a modern cup, sometimes a little more, while the teacup ran smaller. Since every measure here is in the same unit, the ratios hold either way: read it as 1 cup sugar, 1/2 cup butter, 1/2 cup milk, 2 cups flour and the cake works.
- Method, since none is givenCream the softened butter with the sugar until pale, add the milk and sifted flour with baking powder alternately, flavour, then fold in the whites beaten to soft peaks last. Using whites only, with no yolks, is what makes this a white cake; folding them in at the end keeps the crumb light.
- OvenBake at 350F. A cake this size takes 25-30 minutes in two 8-inch layers, or 35-45 minutes in a single loaf or 8-inch square pan, until a skewer comes out clean.
- Baking powderTwo teaspoons to two cups of flour is still standard. Older powders were often single-acting and weaker, so if the batter seems very lively, that is the modern double-acting product doing its work — get it into the oven promptly.
- FlourPlain soft-wheat or cake flour gives the fine white crumb intended. All-purpose works but yields a slightly firmer cake; measure by spooning into the cup and levelling rather than scooping.
- Lemon extractNo quantity is given. Half to one teaspoon is right; extract strengths vary and a heavy hand turns the cake soapy.
- Yield and servingRoughly a two-layer 8-inch cake, 8 to 10 servings. A boiled white icing is the period-appropriate finish if one is wanted.
- The four leftover yolksThey keep a day or two covered in the refrigerator. Some books of this period carry a gold cake alongside a white one, which uses the yolks up.
White cake depends on two things becoming cheap at roughly the same time: chemical leavening, widely sold from the middle of the nineteenth century, and finely milled white flour and refined white sugar. Before that, a cake pale all through was a mark of expense; afterwards it was within reach of an ordinary household, and pairing a white cake with a companion "gold cake" for the yolks became a standard piece of domestic economy. The recipe's shorthand form, a bare list with no directions and measurements given in the coffee-cup, a recognised if variable unit, is typical of the period, written for readers assumed to know the rest.