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Rice Cake
One pound sugar, a pound of ground rice, half pound butter, nine eggs, rose-water to taste; add a little salt, beat butter and sugar together, add rose-water, salt and eggs, lastly the rice; bake in shallow pans. - Governor Rice, Mass.
A pound cake in structure but built on rice rather than wheat, so it has no gluten and no chemical leavening. Everything depends on air beaten into the butter, sugar and eggs.
- The hinge: air is the only leaveningThere is no baking powder or soda here, so the rise comes entirely from creaming. Beat the butter and sugar until pale and visibly fluffy, then add the eggs one at a time, beating hard after each. If the batter breaks or looks curdled the cake will be dense and greasy.
- Weights in cupsOne pound of sugar is about 2 1/4 cups; half a pound of butter is 2 sticks (8 oz); a pound of ground rice runs roughly 3 to 3 1/3 cups. Eggs of the period were probably a little smaller on average than today's large eggs, so eight large eggs (about 1 lb in the shell) may come nearer the intent than nine — but that is an estimate, and nine medium eggs will do as well.
- Ground riceThis is rice milled to a gritty meal, slightly coarser than modern rice flour. Rice flour substitutes directly and gives a finer crumb; fine semolina is not a substitute, as it is wheat.
- Rose-water to tastePeriod recipes often call for rose water by the tablespoon, which suggests much of what was used was milder than the more concentrated bottles sold now, though strengths vary at both ends. Start with 1 to 2 teaspoons of a modern product for this quantity of batter and taste the raw mixture; too much reads as soap.
- Salt"A little salt" in a cake this size means about 3/4 teaspoon, assuming unsalted butter.
- Oven and pansThe recipe gives no temperature; a moderate oven, around 350F, suits it. 'Shallow pans' can be read as a large sheet or two 9-inch square pans, filled about an inch deep — expect 30 to 40 minutes, until the top springs back and a tester comes out clean. Baked deep, the centre stays gummy long after the edges dry out.
- Texture and keepingRice gives a short, sandy crumb that firms up and dries faster than a wheat pound cake. It is best the day it is made, or wrapped tightly and eaten within two days.
- YieldThe full quantity comes to roughly 3 1/2 lb of batter — enough for about two dozen squares. Halving it is straightforward.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping (1877) grew out of a Marysville, Ohio, church fundraiser and was compiled by Estelle Woods Wilcox; its cake chapter carries numerous contributions credited to public figures and their households, among them a Rice Cake attributed to Governor Rice of Massachusetts. Alexander H. Rice was that state's governor from 1876 to 1879, exactly when the book was being assembled; whether the pairing of name and ingredient was deliberate, and whether the recipe passed through his kitchen or simply his name, is not documented. The cake itself belongs to a long English tradition of rice-flour pound cakes, valued in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for a close, delicate crumb. Rose water as the dominant flavouring is the older taste — it was common in cake before vanilla extract became cheap and widespread in American kitchens later in the century.