Home › The Principles of Cookery › Citron Cake
Citron Cake
Mix the well-beaten yolks of six eggs with half a pound of pounded and sifted sugar, and ten ounces of fine flour; add half a pound of fresh butter beaten to a cream, four ounces of candied citron chopped small, a wine-glassful of brandy, and the whites of the eggs beaten to a firm froth. Mix thoroughly, pour the mixture into a well-buttered mould, and bake it in a good oven. Time to bake, about three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost, exclusive of the brandy, 1s. 10d. Sufficient for a medium-sized mould.
A rich pound-cake batter leavened entirely by beaten egg white, so the folding is the whole recipe. Handle the whites carelessly and you get a dense, greasy brick.
- The hinge: the whitesThere is no baking powder or soda here. The six whites, beaten to a firm froth, are the only lift, so fold them in with a spatula in two or three additions and stop the moment no streaks remain. Get the batter into the mould and the oven without delay.
- Weights in modern termsHalf a pound of sugar is 225 g (about 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons); ten ounces of flour is 285 g (a little over 2 1/4 cups); half a pound of butter is 225 g, or two American sticks. Weigh rather than scoop, since the flour-to-fat ratio is what keeps this cake from collapsing.
- Pounded and sifted sugarThat is caster sugar, not powdered or confectioners' sugar, which contains starch. Ordinary granulated will work but takes longer to cream in.
- A wine-glassfulIn Victorian cookery books a wine-glass is usually reckoned at about 2 fluid ounces (60 ml), though the measure was never standardised. Brandy at that quantity is flavouring rather than liquid structure; the costing line simply leaves its price out of the total, and omitting it alters little but the taste.
- "A good oven"No temperature is given; for a rich butter cake a modern equivalent of about 350F (175C) is a reasonable working figure. Baked hotter it will set a crust before the centre rises. The recipe's three-quarters of an hour suits a loaf or ring mould of about 8 inches; test with a skewer at 40 minutes.
- Candied citronCitron is the thick-rinded citrus preserved in syrup, sold in blocks or diced with holiday baking supplies. It is firmer and less sweet than candied orange peel. Toss the chopped pieces in a spoonful of the measured flour so they do not sink.
- The mouldButter it and dust with flour, or line the base with parchment; there is a lot of sugar and fruit here and it will stick. A plain ring or fluted tube mould gives the most even bake.
- YieldRoughly 2 lb 10 oz of batter, which fills a 2-quart mould or a large loaf tin and cuts into 10 to 12 slices. It keeps well wrapped for several days.
Citron cake belongs to the long English line of rich egg-and-butter cakes that descend from the seventeenth-century "great cake" and were simplified in the eighteenth into the equal-weights pound cake. What distinguishes this version is the candied citron, a costly import made from the thick peel of Citrus medica preserved in sugar, most of it reaching Britain from Italy and the Mediterranean islands. Cassell's gives a probable cost of 1s. 10d., a figure the book supplies throughout so a household could judge a dish against its weekly budget, and at that price this was a cake for company rather than everyday tea. The reliance on beaten whites rather than chemical leavening is also telling: baking powder was widely available by the later nineteenth century, yet the older method survived in rich cakes.