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White Pound Cake
One pound sugar, one of flour, half pound butter, whites of sixteen eggs, tea-spoon baking-powder sifted thoroughly with the flour; put in cool oven with gradual increase of heat. For boiled icing for the cake, take three cups sugar boiled in one of water until clear; beat whites of three eggs to very stiff froth, and pour over them the boiling liquid, beating all the time for ten minute; frost while both cake and icing are warm. -Mrs. Ada Estelle Bever, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
A true pound cake scaled by weight, lightened with egg whites only and a modest amount of baking powder. The vessel and the oven curve matter more here than anything else.
- The pound measuresOne pound sugar is about 2 1/4 cups granulated; one pound flour is roughly 3 1/2 to 4 cups sifted, so weigh it if you can. Half a pound butter is two sticks, and it should be soft enough to cream but not oily.
- Sixteen egg whitesSixteen modern large eggs give about 2 cups of whites. Whites at room temperature whip higher; the yolks can be saved for a gold cake.
- Method the recipe assumesNo method is given, so the usual period order has to be inferred: cream butter and sugar until pale, fold in the flour sifted with the baking powder alternately with the stiffly beaten whites, and stop folding the moment the batter is uniform. Overworking the whites can leave the cake dense.
- "Cool oven with gradual increase of heat"Start at about 300F and raise to 325F after the first half hour. This is a heavy batter in a large pan and will need roughly 1 1/4 to 1 3/4 hours; test with a skewer at the thickest point rather than by time.
- Pan and yieldThe batter fills a 10-inch tube pan or two large loaf pans, and serves sixteen to twenty in the thin slices the period expected. Line and butter thoroughly; a cake this rich in sugar sticks.
- "Boiled until clear" is vagueThree cups sugar to one of water is a standard frosting syrup, and it should be cooked to the soft-ball stage, 238-240F on a thermometer. Clarity alone happens long before the syrup is concentrated enough to set, so judge by temperature.
- Pouring the syrupAdd the boiling syrup to the stiff whites in a thin steady stream at the side of the bowl, never in a lump, and keep beating the full ten minutes until the meringue holds its shape and has cooled to barely warm. A stand mixer does this far better than a hand whisk and a hot pan.
- Frosting while warmBoiled icing spread on a warm cake seals and glosses over as it cools, but it also stiffens fast in the bowl. Have the cake turned out and ready before the syrup goes on the whites, and work quickly.
Pound cake takes its name from the old equal-weight formula, a pound each of butter, sugar, flour and eggs. By the 1870s, when Buckeye Cookery was in circulation, having begun in Marysville, Ohio as Practical Housekeeping before later editions were issued from Minneapolis, that formula had begun to fragment: butter is halved here, chemical baking powder does part of the lifting, and the whites alone are used to keep the crumb white. The split of a dozen or more eggs into a white cake and a gold cake was thrift as much as fashion. The boiled icing, an Italian meringue in all but name, was the standard American frosting of the era, valued because it set firm without refrigeration and used up three more whites.