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Derwentwater Cakes
Divide four eggs, beat up the yolks and whisk the whites to a froth. Rub half a pound of good fresh butter into one pound of flour, add half a pound of well-washed currants, and the same quantity of powdered sugar. Mix the flour with the eggs to a stiff paste. Roll and cut into small round cakes. Bake in a slow oven for fifteen minutes. Probable cost, 1s. 8d. Sufficient for one dozen or more cakes.
A rich rubbed-in currant biscuit with no leavening but beaten egg, and no liquid at all beyond the eggs. A few of the original's terms need translating before you start.
- The hinge: the paste is meant to be stiffFour eggs are the only moisture in a pound of flour, so the dough will feel dry and crumbly at first and comes together only with persistent working. Resist adding milk or water; extra liquid turns these from a short, crisp cake into a scone.
- "Powdered sugar" is not confectioners' sugarIn Victorian usage powdered sugar meant loaf sugar crushed and sieved fine, roughly today's caster or superfine sugar. Modern confectioners' sugar contains cornstarch and will give a chalkier, softer result.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants. Half a pound is about 1 1/2 cups.
- Why they are washedNineteenth-century dried fruit arrived gritty with sand and stem. Modern packaged currants need no washing; if you do rinse them, dry them thoroughly on a towel or the surface moisture will slacken the paste.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives none. "Slow oven" in books of this period is usually taken as somewhere in the region of 300-325F. Fifteen minutes may not be enough for small cakes of this richness, so expect to go longer, or bake at 325F for 15-18 minutes until the edges are just coloured and the tops dry.
- Rolling and cuttingRoll about 1/3 inch thick and cut with a 2-inch cutter. Rolled much thinner they scorch at the currants before the centre sets.
- The separated eggsThere is no chemical leavening here, so the whisked whites are all there is by way of lift, though little of the froth will survive being worked into so stiff a paste. The recipe does not say at what point the whites go in.
- Yield and keepingThe original says "one dozen or more"; the actual count depends entirely on how thick you roll and how wide you cut, and at the thickness suggested above you will get considerably more than a dozen. They keep in a tin.
- The cost line1s. 8d. is the pre-decimal price to the Victorian housekeeper, given so she could cost her week. It has no bearing on shopping today.
Cassell's compiled its dictionary from the whole spread of British domestic cookery, and this is a Cumberland-flavoured entry: Derwentwater is the lake below Keswick, and the name is most simply read as pointing to that lake rather than to any documented originator of the cake. Northern England has a deep tradition of currant-heavy short pastes and pastries -- Cumberland currant cake, Eccles and Chorley cakes across the Pennine counties -- built on imported dried fruit. What distinguishes this version is its plainness: no spice, no candied peel, no spirits, just butter, flour, sugar, eggs and currants in the tidy proportions (1 lb flour, 1/2 lb each of butter, sugar and fruit) that made a recipe easy to remember and easy to scale. Recipes bearing a place name in books of this period are as often a bookseller's geography as a genuine local record, so treat the attribution as traditional rather than proven.