Home › The Principles of Cookery › Cocoa-Nut Pound-Cake
Cocoa-Nut Pound-Cake
Beat half a pound of fresh butter to a cream, add gradually one pound of fine flour, one pound of sifted sugar, two tea-spoonfuls of baking-powder, a small pinch of salt, a tea-spoonful of finely-chopped lemon-rind, the white part of a cocoa-nut finely grated, four eggs well beaten, and a cupful of new milk. Butter some square tins, and line them with buttered paper, spread the mixture in them about an inch and a half in depth, and bake in a good oven. When they are sufficiently baked, spread some sugar icing over them, and return them to the oven for a minute or two to dry. Time to bake, from thirty to forty minutes. Probable cost, 2s. 3d. for this quantity. Sufficient for two or three small cakes, or one large one.
A late-Victorian pound cake in name only shleavening comes from baking powder rather than beaten eggs alone. The mixing method as written is unusual and worth reading carefully before you start.
- The creaming orderThe recipe has you beat the butter alone, then add the flour and sugar. Modern practice is to cream the half pound of butter with the pound of sugar first, then add eggs, then alternate flour and milk. The finished crumb is finer and you avoid a greasy, sandy batter.
- "A good oven"A steady, well-heated but not fierce oven. The book gives no temperature; modern renderings usually put it somewhere around 350F. At an inch and a half deep the stated thirty to forty minutes is realistic; test with a skewer at thirty.
- New milkSimply fresh whole milk, as opposed to milk that had stood and separated or gone sour. Whole milk is the direct substitute.
- The coconut"the white part of a cocoa-nut" means the meat of one whole fresh nut with the brown skin pared off, finely grated -- a medium nut gives roughly 10 to 14 oz, or about 3 to 4 cups grated. Unsweetened desiccated coconut works but is drier; soak it briefly in some of the milk. Sweetened bagged coconut will push an already very sweet cake over the edge.
- Sugar and flour weightsA pound each of flour and sugar with only half a pound of butter and four eggs makes a stiff, sweet batter. Do not be tempted to leave out the cupful of milk; it is what makes the mixture spreadable.
- Lemon-rindA teaspoonful finely chopped is rather less than a whole lemon's worth; think the rind of a small lemon. Grating it straight into the sugar and rubbing the two together releases more oil than chopping.
- Tins and liningButtered paper means what parchment does now. Square tins spread an inch and a half deep suits two 8-inch squares; slice into bars after icing.
- Drying the icingThe brief return to the oven sets a simple water icing to a matte crust. A minute or two at low heat is all it takes any longer and the icing cracks and the cake edges dry out.
- YieldThe full quantity is substantial: on the recipe's own weights something over 4 lb of batter, giving two 8-inch squares or one large cake, comfortably 20 to 24 portions.
Pound cake takes its name from the original proportions a pound each of butter, sugar, flour and eggs and by the time Cassell's Dictionary appeared in the 1870s the name had loosened into a general term for a rich, close-textured cake, whatever the actual weights. This version has drifted a long way from the formula: the butter is halved, chemical baking powder does work the eggs once did alone, and coconut has arrived. Fresh coconuts are generally said to have reached British ports in greater numbers through the late nineteenth century, on trade routes associated with copra for soap and candle manufacture, and grated coconut seems to have become a fashionable cake and confectionery flavouring around this period, though the evidence is not firm. The costing of 2s. 3d. is a reminder of what the book was for: Cassell's gave a price for nearly every dish so a household could judge whether it could afford to make it.