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Whipped-Cream Cake
One cup sugar, two eggs, two table-spoons softened butter and four of milk; beat all well together; add a cup of flour in which has been mixed tea-spoon cream tartar and half tea-spoon soda. Bake in rather small square dripping-pah. When cake is cool have ready a half pint sweet cream whipped to a stiff froth, sweeten and flavor to taste, spread over cake and serve while fresh. The cream will froth easier to be made cold by setting on ice before whipping. -Mrs. Wm. Brown, Massillon. 1
A thin, sugar-heavy sheet cake of the hot-milk-sponge family, dressed at the last minute with whipped cream. The whole point is freshness, so bake it the day it will be eaten.
- The hinge: assemble at serving timeThe cream is spread on cooled cake and eaten straight away — there is no stabiliser and no chilling period. Sitting more than an hour or two turns the surface soggy and the cream weeps.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives none. A batter this shallow wants 350F, 18 to 25 minutes, until the top springs back and a tester comes out clean.
- "Rather small square dripping-pan"A dripping-pan was the shallow rectangular pan set under roasting meat. For this quantity of batter use an 8-inch square pan, greased and floured; the cake should come out no more than about an inch thick.
- Cream of tartar and sodaOne teaspoon cream of tartar with half a teaspoon soda is the period substitute for about two teaspoons of modern double-acting baking powder. Either works; if you use the original pair, get the cake into the oven promptly, as the reaction begins as soon as the milk wets it.
- Half pint of creamOne cup, which whips up to roughly two cups — enough to cover an 8-inch square generously. Buy cream labelled heavy or heavy whipping (about 36 percent fat); lighter whipping cream at around 30 percent will whip but holds less well, as will ultra-pasteurised cream.
- Chilling before whippingThe advice about setting the cream on ice is sound and worth following. Chill the bowl and the beaters too, and stop whipping at soft, stiff peaks rather than working it toward butter.
- Butter and flavouringTwo tablespoons of softened butter is a very small amount of fat; do not attempt to cream it with the sugar, simply beat everything together as directed. "Flavor to taste" is left open — vanilla or lemon extract would be usual choices of the period. A pinch of salt in the batter is not in the original and improves it.
- YieldSix to eight modest squares, cut in the pan.
Buckeye Cookery (published in Ohio in the mid-1870s, and appearing as Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping) was built largely from contributions solicited from women across the state, which is why so many recipes carry a name and a town — here Mrs. Wm. Brown of Massillon. Whipped cream on cake was something of a household luxury in the late nineteenth century: it called for cream that had not been skimmed for butter, and ice to cool it, which may be part of why the recipe bothers to explain the ice trick. Before commercial baking powder became cheap and reliable, the cream of tartar and soda pairing was a common American leavening, bought as separate ingredients and measured by the cook. The cake itself belongs to a large family of plain quick sheet cakes meant to be finished with whatever the dairy or the fruit bowl offered that day.