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Bride's Cake
Whites of twelve eggs, three cups sugar, small cup butter, a cup sweet milk, four small cups flour, half cup corn starch, two teaspoons baking powder, lemon to taste. Adding a cup citron sliced thin and dusted with flour, makes a beautiful citron cake. -Mrs. Harvey Clark, Piqua.
A large white cake built entirely on egg whites, with no oven temperature, pan size or mixing method given — Buckeye Cookery kept those in the general directions at the head of its cake chapter. Here is what a modern cook needs to fill in.
- The hinge: beat and fold the whitesThe recipe gives no method, but a cake of this type relies on the twelve whites as much as on the baking powder. Beat them to firm but not dry peaks and fold them into the finished batter in thirds; folded in carelessly, the cake will bake heavier than intended.
- Egg whites, by volumeTwelve modern large whites run about 1 1/2 cups; period eggs were smaller, so measure rather than count.
- "Small cup" and "four small cups"The book does not define these measures; a "small cup" is simply understood as somewhat less than a full one. Read the butter as a scant cup and start with slightly less than four cups of flour, adding the rest only if the batter is slack.
- Flour and corn starchThe half cup of corn starch softens what would then have been a fairly strong household flour. Use all-purpose plus the starch as written, or substitute cake flour for the whole 4 cups and drop the starch.
- Baking powderTwo teaspoons of modern double-acting powder is if anything stronger than the single-acting powders of 1877. Do not increase it, and get the batter into the oven promptly once the powder is wet.
- Lemon to tasteLemon extract, about 1 to 2 teaspoons, is the likeliest reading; zest from one lemon works as well and tastes better. Juice is riskier in a creamed butter-and-milk batter.
- Oven and pansNo temperature is given; a moderate oven, around 350F, suits it. This is a large batter — divide it between two 9-inch round pans (35-40 minutes) or one tube pan (about 1 hour), and test with a skewer rather than by time alone.
- CitronCandied citron, the peel of a thick-rinded citrus, is still sold at holiday baking counters. Slice it thin and toss with flour as directed so it stays suspended instead of sinking; candied lemon peel is a fair stand-in.
- YieldAbout 16 to 20 servings. The cake keeps well wrapped for several days and was traditionally finished with a plain white boiled or royal icing.
Nineteenth-century American bride's cake was white — white crumb, white icing — and the color is often said to have stood in for the bride's dress at a time when a wedding cake was as likely to be a dark fruitcake as anything else. Recipes like this one drove a small domestic economy of leftovers: a cake taking twelve whites left twelve yolks behind, which is why books of the period so often print a gold cake or a boiled custard alongside. Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping, first published in Marysville, Ohio in 1877, was assembled from contributions by named Ohio housewives, and the credit to Mrs. Harvey Clark of Piqua is typical of how the book worked — a community's recipes collected as they were actually written down, terse, with the mixing method assumed to be common knowledge. The variation note at the end, turning the same batter into citron cake, reflects the practical habit of getting several cakes out of one reliable formula.