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Orange Shortcake
One quart flour, two table-spoons butter, two tea-spoons baking powder thoroughly mixed with the flour; mix (not very stiff) with cold water, work as little as possible, bake, split open, and lay sliced oranges between; cut in squares and serve with pudding
A lean, unsweetened biscuit dough split and layered with fruit — the older American sense of "shortcake," closer to a scone than to a sponge. The original leaves out both salt and sugar and gives no oven heat, so a few decisions have to be made for you.
- A quart of flourFlour was measured by volume in dry quart measures: about 4 cups, roughly 16-18 oz depending on how it was scooped. Two tablespoons of butter to that much flour is very lean by modern taste; 4 to 6 tablespoons gives a tender crumb without changing the character of the dough.
- LeaveningTwo teaspoons of baking powder per quart of flour is light; modern practice is closer to 1 teaspoon per cup, so 4 teaspoons. Nineteenth-century baking powders varied in strength, and the original quantity will give a stiffer, less-risen result than we expect.
- Salt and sugarNeither appears. Add about a teaspoon of salt; a tablespoon or two of sugar in the dough is optional and would not have been unusual in a shortcake meant for dessert.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given, as household ovens had no thermometers. Bake this as you would biscuits: 425-450F for 15-20 minutes for a single round or square cake about an inch thick.
- Work as little as possibleThis is the hinge of the recipe. Rub the butter in, add the cold water until the dough just holds, and stop. Overworking develops gluten and turns the layers tough and bready rather than short.
- The orangesSlice them crosswise, remove seeds and any thick pith, and sugar them for 20-30 minutes so they give up a little juice to soak into the cut surface. Split the cake while still warm, which is easier than cutting it cold.
- "Serve with pudding"This most likely means serve it alongside a sweet pudding sauce rather than a pudding in the British sense of the whole course, though the wording as given is ambiguous. A thin lemon or vanilla sauce, or plain cream, would suit.
- YieldA quart of flour makes a generous cake — one 9-inch round or square, cut into 8 or 9 portions. Best eaten the day it is baked.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping (1877), compiled by Estelle Woods Wilcox from contributions by Ohio housewives, belongs to the period when American "shortcake" still meant a rich biscuit dough rather than a cake. Strawberry shortcake was the famous version, but strawberries were a matter of weeks in early summer, while oranges were a winter import, reaching northern markets from Florida and from the Mediterranean in the cold months — precisely when a household would want a fruit dessert and have nothing local to hand. That the recipe uses baking powder rather than saleratus and sour milk marks it as fairly current for its date — commercial baking powders had become widely available in American kitchens only in the preceding couple of decades, and older books in the same tradition are still full of soda-and-buttermilk instructions.