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Everlasting Cake
Beat together the yolks of six eggs and three-fourths of a pint white sugar, add one and a half pints blanched and shelled almonds, half pound sliced citron well floured, and the whipped whites with one and a half pints sifted flour; pour one and a half inches thick in well-greased dripping pans, bake in a quick oven, and, when done, cut slices one inch thick across the cake, turn each slice over on its side, return to oven and bake a short time. When cold place in a tin box. These will keep a year and a half or more, and are nice to have in store. - Mrs. J. S. Williams, Brooklyn.
A twice-baked almond cake in the biscotti manner — no butter, no leavening, and no liquid beyond the eggs, which is exactly why it keeps. A few of the measures and the oven language need translating before you start.
- The hinge: the second bakeThe slices are returned to the oven to dry out, not to colour. Keep that stage low and slow — around 300F for 15-20 minutes a side — until the cut faces are dry to the touch. Any moisture left in the centre is what will spoil the keeping quality the recipe promises.
- Measures by volumeThree-fourths of a pint of sugar is 1 1/2 cups; a pint and a half of flour is 3 cups (sifted, then measured); a pint and a half of almonds is about 3 cups whole, roughly 1 lb. Half a pound of citron is about 1 1/2 cups sliced.
- A quick ovenThe book gives no temperatures; "quick oven" is conventionally read as somewhere around 400-450F. For a batter this eggy and this deep, the lower end is the safer reading — start at 375-400F and expect 30-40 minutes, since the point of the first bake is to set the loaf firmly through, not to brown the crust.
- CitronCandied citron peel, sold in blocks at holiday time and stocked year-round by baking suppliers. Flouring the slices keeps them suspended rather than sinking to the bottom of the pan.
- Blanched almonds"Blanched" means the skins are off, "shelled" means out of the shell; buy them blanched and whole. The recipe gives no instruction to chop them, so whole is the natural reading, and that is what gives the cut slices their marbled face.
- No leavening, no fatThe whipped whites are the only lift, so fold them in with the flour rather than beating, and get the pans into the oven at once. A pinch of salt is a reasonable modern addition; nothing else is needed.
- Dripping pansA dripping pan is a shallow rimmed roasting pan. Any rimmed pan deep enough will do — the batter needs to sit about 1 1/2 inches deep, so choose the pan to suit the volume rather than spreading it thin.
- Yield and keepingStored properly dry in an airtight tin they will keep for months; the year and a half claimed here assumes a cold larder and no humidity, and the almonds will eventually go rancid whatever you do.
Twice-baked keeping cakes of this kind run through nineteenth-century American cookbooks under a variety of names — zwieback, rusk, and here simply "everlasting" — and all descend from the same practical idea that drying a baked good a second time drives off the moisture that mould and staling need. Buckeye Cookery (1877, out of Marysville, Ohio) collected its recipes by contribution, and the credit to Mrs. J. S. Williams of Brooklyn is typical of the book's method. The frame of reference is a household without refrigeration, where "nice to have in store" was a real virtue: a tin of these on a shelf meant something to set before an unexpected caller in February. The heavy use of blanched almonds and citron also marks it as a company cake rather than everyday baking — both were imported, expensive, and reserved for something worth keeping.