Home › Cake-Making › Hickory-Nut Cake (Cup butter two of sugar three)
Hickory-Nut Cake (Cup butter two of sugar three)
A cup butter, two of sugar, three of flour, one of sweet milk, whites of seven and yolks of two eggs, a tea-spoon soda, two of cream tartar, one pint hickory-nut meats rolled and sprinkled with flour; beat the whites to a stiff froth. Rich and excellent. -Mrs. A. B. Morey.
A plain butter cake in the old proportion — one of butter, two of sugar, three of flour — leavened with soda and cream of tartar and loaded with nut meats. The original assumes you know the method, the pan and the oven, so those are the gaps to fill.
- The hinge: flour the nutsTossing the rolled nut meats in flour is what keeps a pint of them from sinking into the bottom of the batter. Take the flour from the three cups already measured, and fold the nuts in last, after the whites.
- Cream of tartar and sodaOne teaspoon soda with two of cream of tartar is a scratch baking powder, equivalent to roughly four teaspoons of modern double-acting powder. It is single-acting, so it begins working the moment the milk hits it — have the pans greased and the oven hot before you mix.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh unsoured milk, as opposed to the buttermilk or sour milk used in soda cakes. Whole milk is the right reading.
- Seven whites, two yolksThe lopsided egg count is deliberate: the whites give lift and a pale crumb, and the two yolks give just enough richness. It leaves you five yolks over, to be used in something else.
- MethodCream the butter and sugar, beat in the yolks, then add the milk and dry ingredients alternately, then fold in the stiff whites and the floured nuts. Beat the whites stiff but not dry or they will not fold in cleanly.
- Hickory nutsShagbark hickory is rarely sold shelled; pecans are the closest relative and the standard substitute, with black walnuts giving a stronger, more assertive result. "Rolled" means broken coarse with a rolling pin, not ground.
- Oven and panNo temperature is given because none could be. Bake at 350F: about 50 to 60 minutes in a 10-inch tube pan, or 30 to 35 minutes in two 9-inch layers. It is a heavy batter and wants a moderate steady heat rather than a quick one.
- YieldRoughly a 3-pound cake, 12 to 16 servings. It keeps well wrapped for several days and slices better on the second day.
Hickory-nut cake belongs to the American interior, where the shagbark and shellbark hickories grow wild and the nuts were gathered in autumn rather than bought. The shells are thick and awkwardly chambered, so a pint of picked meats represents real labor — which is why the cake reads as a company or holiday cake. Buckeye Cookery, first issued in 1877 out of the Ohio and Upper Midwest church-society tradition, is largely unsigned editorial matter with some credited contributors, among them Mrs. Morey. The pecan, now the usual stand-in, is itself a hickory, which is why the substitution works as well as it does.