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Sponge Cake (Three eggs one and a half cups)
Three eggs, one and a half cups powdered sugar, two of sifted flour, two tea-spoons cream tartar, half cup cold water, tea-spoon soda, grated rind and half the juice of one lemon; bake in drippingpan.-Mrs. Eliza J. Starr.
A plain water sponge of the sort that fills the cake chapters of 1870s community books: no butter, no milk, and no oven temperature given. The eggs and the cream of tartar/soda pair do all the lifting, so the mixing matters more than anything else here.
- Beat the eggs first and hardWith no fat and only half a cup of water for liquid, the aeration in the eggs is most of the rise. Beat whole eggs with the sugar until thick, pale, and falling in a ribbon — several minutes with a mixer — then fold the flour in rather than stirring it.
- Powdered sugarIn this period the term usually means granulated sugar ground fine, not the modern confectioners' sugar cut with cornstarch. Ordinary granulated, or superfine if you have it, is the closer match.
- Cream of tartar and sodaThis is home-mixed baking powder: two teaspoons cream of tartar to one of soda, roughly the strength of three or four teaspoons of commercial baking powder. Sift both with the flour, or dissolve the soda in the cold water, and get the batter into the oven promptly — the acid and soda begin reacting on contact.
- FlourTwo cups sifted, measured after sifting. Modern all-purpose flour is likely stronger than much household flour of the period, so spoon it in lightly and stop mixing the moment it disappears.
- Dripping-panA shallow rectangular pan of the kind set under roasting meat. A half-sheet or a 9x13 works; grease and line it. The cake bakes thin and can be cut in squares.
- OvenNo temperature is given; household ranges of the period had no reliable oven gauge. A moderate oven, around 350F, is a reasonable modern equivalent, and a thin sheet in a dripping-pan should be done in about 18 to 25 minutes, when the top springs back.
- LemonGrated rind and the juice of half a lemon — add both with the water. The acid also helps the soda along.
- YieldAbout 16 to 20 squares from a 9x13. Fatless sponge stales fast; it is best the day it is baked, or filled and rolled while still warm.
Sponge cake is often said to have earned its place in nineteenth-century American kitchens because it needed no butter, which was expensive and seasonal, and no yeast, which needed time. Buckeye Cookery (first published in Ohio in 1876 as the Centennial Buckeye Cook Book, retitled Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping in 1877) prints several sponge cakes side by side, each contributed by a named woman and each identified in the index by its proportions — here "three eggs, one and a half cups." The cream of tartar and soda are worth noticing: commercial baking powder existed by the 1870s but was distrusted as adulterated, and recipes of this kind still call for the two components separately. Baking in a dripping-pan rather than a tube or loaf tin marks this as an everyday cake, cut into squares for tea rather than turned out whole.