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Angel's Food
Use the whites of eleven eggs, one and a half tumbler of sifted granulated sugar, one tumbler sifted flour, one tea-spoon of vanilla, one tea-spoon of cream tartar; sift the flour four times, then add the cream tartar and sift again-but measure it before putting in the cream of tartar-sift the sugar and measure it; beat the eggs to a stiff froth on a large platter; on the same platter add the sugar lightly, then the flour very gently, then the vanilla; do not stop beating until you put it in the pan to bake. Bake forty minutes in a moderate oven, try with a straw and if too soft let it remain a few minutes longer. Do not open the oven until the cake has been in fifteen minutes. Turn the pan upside down to cool, and when cold, take out by loosening around the sides with a knife, and then ice; use a pan that has never been greased. The tumbler for measuring must hold two and one-fourth gills. The pans have feet.
An early angel food cake, written before standard cup measures reached American kitchens. The measuring vessel is defined at the end of the recipe, which is the key to the whole thing.
- The tumblerThe recipe defines it as 2 1/4 gills, or 9 fluid ounces — about 1 1/8 cups. So the sugar is roughly 1 2/3 cups sifted granulated, and the flour roughly 1 1/8 cups sifted, measured before the cream of tartar goes in.
- Eleven egg whitesNineteenth-century eggs are generally reckoned to have run smaller than today's large eggs, so measure by volume instead: about 1 1/3 to 1 1/2 cups of whites, which is roughly 11 to 12 modern large eggs. Whites at room temperature whip higher.
- Moderate ovenRead that as 325–350F. Angel food is safer at the lower end; a hotter oven sets the crust before the interior has risen and the cake sinks.
- The flourFour siftings substitute for the soft, fine-milled cake flour that did not yet exist as a packaged product. Cake flour, sifted twice, gives the same result with less labor; if using all-purpose, keep the four siftings.
- "Do not stop beating"This is the one instruction to disregard. Continuous beating after the flour goes in knocks out the air the whites hold. Fold the sugar and then the flour in with a wide spatula, a third at a time, and stop as soon as no streaks remain.
- Never-greased pan with feetA tube pan with small legs, so the inverted cake cools suspended above the counter. Ungreased is not fussiness — the batter must grip the sides to climb. A modern two-piece angel food pan works; do not substitute nonstick or a silicone mold.
- Cooling and unmoldingInvert immediately and leave it until fully cold, at least an hour and a half. Turning it out warm collapses the crumb. Loosen with a thin knife held flat against the pan wall.
- Testing and timingForty minutes at 325–350F is about right for a 10-inch tube pan. The straw test still works, though a wooden skewer is easier; the top should also spring back when pressed. Keeping the door shut for the first fifteen minutes is sound advice, not superstition.
- YieldOne 10-inch tube cake, 12 to 16 slices. Cut with a serrated knife or pull apart with two forks; a straight-edged blade compresses it.
Angel food belongs to a specific technological moment. It needs finely granulated white sugar, soft low-protein flour, cream of tartar to stabilize the foam, and a cook willing to beat eleven egg whites by hand — all of which came together in American kitchens in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, when refined sugar became cheap and the rotary egg beater began to spread. Buckeye Cookery (Minneapolis and Ohio, 1877 and after) was compiled from contributed household recipes, and this one still carries the marks of its origin: measured in the contributor's own tumbler, with the capacity spelled out at the end for anyone whose glassware differed. The name is generally taken to refer to the cake's whiteness and lightness, in deliberate contrast to the dense, dark, yolk- and butter-rich pound and fruit cakes it sat beside; the later "devil's food" recipes, first recorded around the turn of the twentieth century, set up the opposite pole. Attributions to the Pennsylvania Dutch, or to particular households, are traditional rather than documented — and the eleven leftover yolks may well have kept custards and gold cakes on the same week's table.