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Battenberg Cake
Crush four ounces of almonds with one egg and two table-spoonfuls of rum; then put twelve ounces of sugar with twelve yolks of eggs into a pan. Beat this until it is frothy, then add the crushed almonds, two ounces of currants, blanched and cleaned, and two ounces of mixed peel that has been passed through hot water. Add slowly eight ounces of flour rubbed through a sieve. Mix slowly, putting in the ten whites of eggs whipped firm. Finish with six ounces of good melted butter. Cook in a plum-cake mould, buttered. Turn it out of mould to cool. Soak it in kummel, brush over with apricot jelly, and ice with fondant or syrup of kummel. Sprinkle the sides and top with chopped pistachios. Probable cost, 3s. 6d.
This is not the pink-and-yellow chequerboard under marzipan that the name now means, but a rich almond-and-yolk cake in the genoise family, baked in a loaf-shaped mould and finished with liqueur and fondant. The original gives no oven heat and no time at all, which is the main gap to fill.
- The hinge: folding in the butterSix ounces of melted butter added last will collapse a whisked yolk-and-white batter if it is hot or poured in a stream. Let it cool to barely lukewarm and fold it in over the batter's surface in three additions, cutting through only until no streaks remain.
- Yolks and whites do not matchThe recipe calls for twelve yolks but only ten whites, plus one whole egg with the almonds. Whether that is intentional or a printer's slip cannot be established from the text; either way the surplus yolks give richness, and if you separate a dozen eggs two whites are left over.
- Crushed almondsFour ounces of almonds pounded with an egg and rum makes a wet paste, the old way of preventing almonds from oiling in a mortar. Ground almonds (almond flour) worked to a paste with the egg and rum in a food processor gives the same result in a minute.
- Plum-cake mould and ovenA plum-cake mould is a deep straight-sided tin, round or oblong; butter it and line the base. The recipe gives no heat and no time: bake at around 325F for roughly 1 to 1 1/4 hours, until a skewer comes out clean; the almond and butter content means a hotter oven will darken the crust long before the centre sets.
- Mixed peel and currantsPassing peel through hot water would have softened candied peel that had dried hard, and rinsed off surplus sugar; modern soft-cut peel does not need it. Rinse and dry the currants rather than soaking them, or they will sink.
- KummelA caraway-flavoured liqueur, still made but no longer a pantry staple. It is what makes this cake taste of its period; a plain sugar syrup with a little kirsch or rum is the nearest substitute, and will taste like a different cake.
- Apricot jelly and fondantWarm sieved apricot jam, brushed on hot, is the glue coat for the icing. "Syrup of kummel" most likely indicates a poured water icing (icing sugar slackened with the liqueur) rather than worked fondant, which sets firmer and slices more cleanly.
- YieldAbout twelve to sixteen slices. It keeps for several days wrapped, and the flavour improves after one.
The name is traditionally traced to the 1884 marriage of Prince Louis of Battenberg to Princess Victoria, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, and a run of Battenberg dishes duly appears in late-Victorian and Edwardian British cookery books, the family being much in the public eye until it anglicised its name to Mountbatten in 1917. What Cassell's records here is the earlier and looser sense of the term: a grand almond cake in the continental manner, steeped in liqueur, glazed with apricot and finished with pistachio, the kind of thing a professional pastry cook produced for a dinner or ball. The chequerboard of pink and plain sponge wrapped in marzipan, which is what the name means in Britain today, belongs to a slightly later tradition and does not appear in this entry at all. The twelve yolks and the generous quantities of butter, sugar and flour mark it as a confectioner's recipe rather than a household one, and the entry closes with a note of probable cost, 3s. 6d.