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Cup Cake
Three cups sugar, one of butter, six of flour, two-thirds pint sour cream, seven eggs (leaving out the whites of two for icing), one even tea-spoon soda in the cream, tea-spoon soda in the flour, one of cream tartar, and one of lemon or vanilla. Bake in pans one inch deep, and when done spread one with icing, and lay the other on top of it, allowing two layers for each cake. - Mrs. Dr. Thompson.
A very large butter cake in the old cup-measure tradition, split and stacked into layers. Everything about it works in modern equipment except the scale, the leavening logic and the missing oven temperature.
- Scale firstSix cups of flour and seven eggs is a party-sized batch — enough for several thin 9-inch layers and more than one finished two-layer cake. Halving or quartering it is sensible for a household.
- Two-thirds pint of sour creamA pint is 2 cups, so this is about 1 1/3 cups. Full-fat cultured sour cream is the closest modern stand-in; low-fat versions carry stabilizers and thin out the crumb.
- The soda in two placesOne teaspoon is stirred into the sour cream to react with its acid, the other is sifted with the flour alongside the cream of tartar — soda plus cream of tartar being homemade baking powder. If you substitute, 2 teaspoons of commercial baking powder replaces the flour-side pair, but keep the teaspoon of soda in the cream or the batter will taste sour.
- OvenThe recipe gives no oven direction; 350F is a reasonable modern setting. Layers baked in pans one inch deep should be checked at 15 to 20 minutes, since thin layers dry out fast and there is no liquid here beyond the cream and eggs.
- Pans"Pans one inch deep" means jelly-roll or shallow round tins, greased and floured, with the batter spread thin rather than mounded. Two of them, baked together, give one cake.
- SaltNone is listed, as was normal when butter came salted by default. With unsalted butter add a scant teaspoon to the flour.
- MethodThe order is unstated but standard for the period: cream butter and sugar, beat in the five whole eggs plus the two extra yolks, then add the soured cream and dry ingredients alternately, flavoring last.
- The reserved whitesThe recipe does not say which icing is meant, but two reserved whites point to an uncooked white-and-sugar icing spread on a cooled cake, which never reaches a safe temperature. Use pasteurized whites, or make a boiled or Swiss meringue icing instead.
"Cup cake" in a book like this has nothing to do with paper liners; it names a cake measured by the cupful rather than weighed on scales, as against the pound cake that took a pound of each thing. Scales were far from universal in American kitchens of the 1870s and 80s, and the cup — whatever cup was in the house — became the working unit, which is why period cup measures vary and why recipes read as ratios: three sugar, one butter, six flour. Sour cream here is not a flavoring but a leavening partner, its lactic acid releasing gas from the soda stirred into it, a habit that predates reliable commercial baking powder. The book credited contributions to named housewives, and Mrs. Dr. Thompson's attribution — husband's title and all — is typical of that practice.