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Lemon Cake (One pound flour one of sugar)
One pound flour, one of sugar, three-fourths pound butter, seven eggs, juice of one and rind of two lemons. The sugar, butter and yolks of eggs must be beaten a long time, adding, by degrees, the Hour, and the whites of eggs last. A tumbler and a half of sliced citron many be added. This keeps well. - Miss M. B. Fullington.
This is a pound cake in the old proportion, leavened entirely by air beaten into the butter, sugar and eggs. There is no baking powder or soda in it by design, so the beating is the recipe.
- The hinge: beat, don't hurryWith no chemical leavening, the rise comes from air whipped into the creamed butter, sugar and yolks and from the whites added at the end. Cream the butter, sugar and yolks until pale and visibly increased in volume — the recipe says 'a long time' — then add the flour by degrees and fold in the whites last, as the recipe directs, so you do not knock the air back out.
- Weights to volumeOne pound flour is about 3 1/2 cups; one pound sugar is about 2 1/4 cups; three-quarters pound butter is 3 sticks. Weighing is far more reliable here, since the ratio is what makes the cake.
- "The Hour"A printer's error for "the flour." Add it gradually, in three or four additions.
- A tumbler and a halfA tumbler is a drinking glass, commonly reckoned at about 8 fluid ounces though sizes varied, so this is roughly 12 fluid ounces — about 1 1/2 cups — of sliced candied citron by volume rather than by weight, a generous amount. Toss the slices in a spoonful of the measured flour so they do not sink.
- CitronCandied citron peel, sold in tubs near the holidays or from baking suppliers. Candied mixed peel or candied lemon peel substitutes directly.
- LemonRind of two lemons means the zest only, taken off without the bitter white pith. Add zest with the creamed butter so its oil disperses, and the juice with the last of the flour.
- Oven and panThis is a large batter, roughly 4 to 4 1/2 pounds. The recipe gives no oven direction; bake in two 9x5-inch loaf pans or a 10-inch tube pan, lined and greased, at about 325°F for a rich cake this size — 1 to 1 1/4 hours for loaves, longer for a tube pan, until a skewer comes out clean.
- Yield and keepingAbout 20 to 24 slices. The claim that it keeps well is accurate: the high butter and sugar content and the candied peel let it hold a week wrapped tightly at room temperature, and it improves after a day.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping (1877), compiled in Ohio from recipes signed by the women who contributed them, carries several cakes of this type, and Miss Fullington's is a pound cake in all but name — the old rule of a pound each of flour, sugar, butter and eggs, here with the butter cut back to three-quarters and the eggs counted out at seven rather than weighed. That equal-weight formula is generally traced to English household books of the eighteenth century, when it was easy to remember and required no scales beyond a balance. Citron, the candied peel of a thick-rinded citrus, was an imported store-cupboard luxury that turned an everyday butter cake into something fit for company, and the recipe notes that it "keeps well".