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Lady's Cake
One-half cup butter, one and a half of sugar, two of flour, nearly one of sweet milk, half tea-spoon soda, one of cream tartar, whites of four eggs well beaten; flavor with peach or almond. - Miss M. E. W., Madison.
A plain white butter cake written in the shorthand of a cook who already knew the method. The proportions are sound; everything omitted is procedure.
- Method, since none is givenCream the butter with the sugar until pale, add the milk and dry ingredients alternately in three or four additions, then fold in the stiffly beaten whites last. Folding rather than beating the whites is what keeps the crumb light.
- Cup sizeA nineteenth-century cup is usually taken as the half-pint, 8 fl oz, close enough to the modern cup that little adjustment is needed. "Nearly one" of milk means a scant cup: start with about 3/4 cup and add the rest only if the batter is stiff.
- Soda and cream of tartarHalf a teaspoon of soda with one of cream of tartar is homemade baking powder, roughly equivalent to 2 teaspoons of modern double-acting powder. Sift both thoroughly through the flour; the reaction begins the moment liquid hits it, so get the batter into the pan promptly.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh unsoured milk, specified because soured milk was the ordinary alternative in a house without refrigeration. Whole milk is the right choice here.
- FlourPeriod flours varied and many were softer than modern all-purpose. Cake flour gives a tenderer result; if using all-purpose, replace two tablespoons per cup with cornstarch.
- FlavoringPeach flavoring of the period was drawn from peach kernels or leaves, which carry the same bitter-almond note; almond extract is the nearest modern substitute. A teaspoon is plenty, as both are assertive.
- Pan and ovenThe recipe specifies neither. Two cups of flour with a cup of milk makes a substantial batter, enough for two 8-inch rounds or a tube pan. Bake at around 350F for 30 to 40 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.
- YieldEnough for two layers, or one large cake; the recipe says nothing about filling, icing, or how it was served.
Lady cake, or lady's cake, is the white half of a pair that runs through American nineteenth-century cookbooks: the whites of the eggs go into the pale, delicately flavored lady cake, and the leftover yolks into a gold cake, richer and darker. The almond or peach flavoring is traditional to the type and appears in many printed versions, the pale color and faint bitter-almond scent being the whole point of the thing. Buckeye Cookery (Minneapolis and Marysville, Ohio, 1877) collected its receipts from named contributors across the Midwest, and the attribution to Miss M. E. W. of Madison is characteristic: the book reads as a compiled community cookbook, with the terseness that comes of writing for other women who already knew how a cake was mixed.