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Corn-Starch Cake
Two coffee-cups pulverized sugar, three-fourths cup butter, cup corn starch dissolved in a cup of sweet milk, two cups flour, whites of seven eggs, two tea-spoons cream tartar, tea-spoon soda mixed thoroughly with the flour; cream butter and sugar, add starch and milk, then add the whites and flour gradually until all is used.
A white butter cake in the pre-baking-powder manner, with cornstarch standing in for part of the flour to lighten the crumb. The instructions assume a cook who already knows how cake is put together, so several steps are only implied.
- Coffee-cup measureThe book does not define its measures; a coffee-cup is generally taken as about a half-pint (roughly 8 ounces), and period cups often ran smaller. Two cups sugar, 1 cup cornstarch, 1 cup milk, 2 cups flour and about 3/4 cup butter is a workable reading.
- Pulverized sugarNot modern powdered (confectioners') sugar, which contains cornstarch and anti-caking agents. Pulverized meant sugar ground fine at home; superfine or caster sugar is the closest match and creams properly with butter.
- Beat the whites firstThe recipe says only "add the whites," but seven whites are meant to be beaten stiff and folded in alternately with the flour. Stirred in liquid, they will not lift the batter and the cake will be dense.
- The leavening pairTwo teaspoons cream of tartar with one teaspoon soda is the homemade equivalent of roughly four teaspoons of baking powder, and being single-acting it reacts the moment liquid hits it. Have the pans greased and the oven hot before you mix.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh unsoured milk. Whole milk is right here; the acid in the batter comes entirely from the cream of tartar, so do not substitute buttermilk without cutting the cream of tartar.
- Oven and panNo temperature or oven description is given in the original. A moderate oven, in the region of 350F, is a reasonable modern reading: two 9-inch layers for 25 to 30 minutes, or a tube pan for 45 to 55 minutes, until a tester comes out clean.
- FlavoringThe original has none. A teaspoon of vanilla or half a teaspoon of almond extract is in keeping with the period and welcome in a cake this plain and pale.
- Yield and the leftover yolksMakes one large cake, roughly twelve to sixteen servings. Seven yolks remain, and cookbooks of the period print yolk-heavy recipes such as gold cake, custards and boiled dressings alongside their white cakes.
Cornstarch cakes appear all through American community cookbooks of the 1870s and 1880s, when commercially milled corn starch had become a cheap pantry staple and manufacturers such as Duryea and Kingsford promoted recipes for it through booklets and trade cards to widen its use. Substituting starch for a portion of the wheat flour lowers the protein of the mix and yields a notably tender, fine, white crumb - the same principle behind modern cake flour, which was not yet sold to home bakers. Buckeye Cookery (first published in Ohio in 1876) sits squarely in the transition from home-mixed cream of tartar and soda to packaged baking powder, and the paired leavening here is a good marker of that moment. The heavy use of whites alone also reflects a period fashion for pure white cake, along with the willingness to find a use for the yolks elsewhere in the day's cooking.