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GATEAU COBURG (Coburg Cake)
Take three-quarters of a pound of sifted flour, half a pound of butter, a quarter of a pound of white sugar, four tea-spoonfuls of ground cinnamon, and the yolks of five eggs, and mix all together to a fine paste. Line a small bakingtin, about an inch deep, with this paste. Sprinkle on the bottom a few currants, crushed ratafias, and shreds of lemon-peel. Pare a few apples, slice them, and flavour them with lemon-juice, and place them in the tin. Whip the whites of five eggs, add a quarter of a pound of ground cinnamon and a quarter of a pound of fine flour. When well mixed, add the yolks with half a pint of sour clotted cream, and beat well together. Pour the mixture over the apples, and bake in a moderate oven until thoroughly cooked through. (Communicated by Mr. A. F. Feltham, G.C.A., chef to her late Majesty Queen Victoria.)
A rich Victorian apple cake in two layers: a cinnamon-scented shortcrust base and a whipped batter poured over the fruit. The printed text has at least one figure that cannot be taken at face value, so read it through before you weigh anything.
- The cinnamon in the topping is almost certainly a misprintThe cinnamon in the topping looks like a misprint -- a quarter of a pound is four ounces of ground cinnamon in the upper batter, against four teaspoons in the whole of the pastry below, and it would overwhelm the cake. What was actually meant cannot be recovered from the text; a teaspoon or two is the safe reading. Treat the quarter pound as unusable as printed.
- The second lot of yolksFive yolks have already gone into the pastry. "Add the yolks" in the topping means five more, from the eggs whose whites you have just whipped — so the whole cake takes ten eggs. Buy accordingly.
- Sour clotted creamHalf an imperial pint is ten fluid ounces, about 1¼ US cups. Clotted cream soured naturally in a Victorian dairy; the nearest modern stand-in is crème fraîche, or double cream slackened with a spoonful of lemon juice and left to thicken. Plain sour cream works but gives a lighter, tangier result.
- RatafiasSmall, hard almond macaroons, roughly the size of a marble. Amaretti crush to much the same effect. Here they are strewn over the pastry base with the currants and lemon-peel before the apples go in.
- OvenA moderate oven is conventionally taken as about 350F / 175C. Given the depth of the wet topping, the lower end -- 325F / 165C -- suits it better, with a check at 45 minutes; a skewer should come out clean and the surface be set and lightly coloured.
- The tinThe text gives only 'small' and 'about an inch deep'; no dimensions are stated. The paste is short and buttery and will crack if rolled thin, so press it into the tin with the fingers instead.
- ApplesSlice thin and overlap them. A firm cooking apple that holds its shape — Bramley collapses, Braeburn or Granny Smith does not — keeps the layer distinct rather than turning to purée under the batter.
- YieldA pound of flour in all (three-quarters in the pastry, a quarter in the topping) and ten eggs make a substantial cake: twelve to sixteen squares. It cuts best cold.
The name honours Saxe-Coburg, the German duchy that gave Britain Prince Albert, and a number of "Coburg" foods -- cakes, loaves, puddings -- appear in British cookery books in the decades after his marriage to Victoria in 1840, much as "Victoria" and "Albert" were attached to other dishes. The cinnamon, sour cream and apples have a Central European character, closer to a Viennese or Bohemian apple slice than to an English apple pie. The attribution to Mr. A. F. Feltham, described as chef to "her late Majesty," places the note after Victoria's death in January 1901, and the royal connection was plainly a selling point. The printed quarter pound of cinnamon in the topping is a reminder that such compilations were not always tested.