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Cherry Cake
Put one pound of flour into a basin with half a pound of butter, ten beaten eggs, half a pound of fine sugar, a pinch of salt, and a spoonful of baking-powder. Mix well together to make a firm paste. Add two or three spoonfuls of cream or milk with twelve ounces of cherries previously boiled in water and then half cooked in sugar. Line some cake moulds with buttered paper, which should be higher than the moulds; half fill the moulds with the dough, and let it rise in a warm place. When it has risen enough, cook the cakes in a moderately hot oven, then turn out of the tins to cool on a wire stand. Serve with the paper on. Orange-or lemon-peel can be added if desired. Probable cost, 2s. 9d.
A very rich egg batter of the pound-cake family, with candied cherries folded through. One instruction in it is a leftover from an older yeast-raised version and should be ignored.
- Do not let it riseThe batter is leavened with baking powder, which begins working the moment liquid touches it. Standing the filled moulds in a warm place only wastes the lift; get them into the oven as soon as they are filled.
- Oven temperatureA "moderately hot" oven is about 375F/190C. With this much egg and butter, a small cake takes 30-40 minutes and a full-sized one closer to an hour; test with a skewer at the centre.
- The cherries"Previously boiled in water and then half cooked in sugar" describes fruit part-way to candying. Glacé or candied cherries are the direct modern equivalent — rinse off the clinging syrup, dry them well and toss in a little of the flour so they do not sink.
- Ten eggsVictorian eggs tended to run smaller than today's. Eight to nine large eggs, about 400-450 g out of the shell, is probably the intended proportion against a pound of flour and half a pound each of butter and sugar.
- "Firm paste"Beat the butter and sugar first, then work in the eggs and flour, or the mass will curdle. The cream or milk goes in at the end to bring it to a heavy dropping consistency rather than a dough you could roll.
- Buttered paperThis is the period's cake liner: paper cut to stand an inch or two above the rim, which supports the batter as it climbs and keeps the sides pale. Baking parchment does the same job. The recipe directs that the cake be served with the paper still on.
- Spoonful of baking-powderAn unqualified spoonful is ambiguous; a teaspoon to two teaspoons is ample for a pound of flour carrying this many eggs.
- YieldThe quantities make roughly 1.8 kg of batter — two 8-inch round cakes, or six to eight small moulds. Half the recipe is more manageable.
Cassell's belonged to the era when a cake like this sat between two traditions: the rich egg-and-butter batters of the eighteenth-century pound cake, raised by long beating and sometimes yeast, and the newer chemically leavened cakes that followed the commercial baking powders of the mid-nineteenth century. The instruction to let the moulds rise in a warm place is plausibly a fossil of the older method, copied along with the rest of the formula even after the baking powder made it pointless — the sort of seam that turns up often in the big compiled dictionaries of cookery, which drew on earlier printed sources freely. The cherries are candied rather than fresh, which is why the cake is not seasonal. The "probable cost, 2s. 9d." is the book's signature feature, letting a cook or housekeeper price a dish before committing to it.