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Snow Cake (Whites of ten eggs beaten)
Whites of ten eggs beaten to a stiff froth, sift lightly on this one and a half cups fine white or pulverized sugar, stir well, and add cup flour mixed with tea-spoon cream tartar; flavor with lemon or vanilla.-Mrs. Dr. Koogler, Connersville, Ind.
This is an early angel food cake, written in the shorthand of a cook who assumed you already knew how to handle a beaten white. The original gives no pan, no temperature and no time, so those are the gaps to fill.
- The hinge: fold, do not stir"Stir well" is period usage for combining, not beating. Once the whites are at stiff peaks, sugar and flour go in by folding with a broad spatula or spoon; any real stirring collapses the foam and the cake is the only leavening it has.
- Cream of tartar placementThe recipe sifts the teaspoon of cream of tartar with the flour. Modern practice adds it to the whites at the soft-foam stage instead, where it stabilises them from the start and gives more reliable volume. Either way the total is the same.
- Pulverized sugarPulverized sugar in 1877 means finely ground granulated, closest today to superfine or caster sugar. It is not confectioners' sugar, which contains cornstarch. Ordinary granulated will work if you pulse it briefly in a grinder.
- FlourPeriod "fine white" flour was probably lower in protein than much modern all-purpose, though 1870s milling varied a good deal. Cake flour, sifted two or three times, gives a texture nearer the intent. Measure after sifting, and sift again over the whites so it lands in a cloud rather than a lump.
- Egg whitesTen large whites is roughly 1 1/4 cups, or about 300 g. Separate them cold, then let them come to room temperature before whipping; they climb higher. Any trace of yolk or grease in the bowl will keep them from stiffening.
- OvenNo temperature is given because the cook judged her range by hand. Bake at 325F for 35 to 45 minutes, until the top springs back and a skewer comes out clean. Higher heat browns and cracks the crust before the centre sets.
- Pan and coolingUse an ungreased 9-inch tube pan; the batter must grip the sides to climb. Invert the pan the moment it leaves the oven and leave the cake hanging until fully cold, or it will compress under its own weight.
- YieldOne tube cake, 10 to 12 slices. Cut it with a serrated knife or a length of thread rather than pressing down with a chef's knife.
Snow cake, silver cake, and angel food all belong to a family of white cakes that spread through American cookbooks in the 1870s and 1880s, and Buckeye Cookery -- compiled by Estelle Woods Wilcox, the widely circulated 1877 Minneapolis edition being a revised and enlarged version of an earlier Ohio printing -- catches them at a moment when they were becoming practical for ordinary households. Finely milled white flour and readily available cream of tartar both helped, though the rise in a cake like this comes from the beaten whites alone. The name describes the crumb, pale to the point of whiteness, at a time when a great deal of cake was yellow with yolks or dark with molasses. Recipes like this one also answered a domestic arithmetic problem, since a household that made custards, puddings and gold cake was left with whites to use up. Buckeye's recipes are credited to named contributors, and the attribution here to Mrs. Dr. Koogler of Connersville, Indiana, is typical of how the book was assembled.