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Guernsey Cake
Rub six ounces of butter to a cream, and work into it four ounces of flour and two ounces of ground rice; add a pinch of salt, a quarter of a pound of finely-sifted loaf sugar, an ounce of candied lemon, finely minced, two ounces of dried cherries, and one ounce of angelica, chopped small. When these ingredients are thoroughly blended, add the yolks of four eggs, well beaten, four drops of almond essence, and a table-spoonful of brandy. Line a cake-tin with oiled paper, and when everything is prepared, add the whites of two eggs, whisked to a firm froth. Beat all together for fully ten minutes, pour into the mould, and bake in a quick oven. Time to bake, three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost, 1s. 3d., exclusive of the brandy. Sufficient for a two-pound tin.
A rich Victorian butter cake with no chemical leavening — everything depends on air beaten into the fat and the whites. A few of its instructions need translating before it will work in a modern oven.
- The hinge: beat, and beat cold-shyThe only lift comes from creamed butter and two whisked whites, so the full ten minutes of beating is not padding. Have the butter soft but not oily, and fold rather than flog once the whites are in — the earlier beating is what builds the structure.
- "A quick oven" needs tempering hereThe book gives no temperatures; a quick oven meant a hot one, hotter than suits a two-pound butter cake, which would set its crust before the centre cooked in the stated three-quarters of an hour. Around 350F and 50-60 minutes, testing with a skewer, is the safer modern reading.
- Loaf sugar, finely siftedLoaf sugar was cut and crushed from a hard cone, then sieved. Caster sugar is the direct equivalent: 4 oz (about 1/2 cup plus a spoonful).
- Ground riceThis is rice flour, not cooked rice or rice pudding mix. Two ounces of it against four of wheat flour gives the short, slightly sandy crumb characteristic of these cakes; don't substitute cornflour, which behaves differently.
- Candied lemon, angelica, dried cherriesCandied lemon peel and glace cherries are still sold; candied angelica stem has become a specialist item and can be left out or replaced with more peel. "Dried cherries" here most likely means the candied or preserved sort rather than modern sour dried cherries.
- Almond essenceModern almond extract is strong and consistent, so keep to the four drops the recipe specifies, or it will bury the lemon and brandy.
- Oiled paper and the tinParchment does the job of oiled paper. A "two-pound tin" is a tin size rather than a weight of batter: a 7-inch round or an 8x4-inch loaf tin is about right.
- Leftover whitesThe recipe uses four yolks and only two whites. Save the other two for meringue or an omelette rather than adding them in — the batter is balanced deliberately rich.
Cassell's gives no origin for the name, and the connection to Guernsey is best treated as traditional rather than documented: the Channel Islands were famous in nineteenth-century Britain for their dairy, and Guernsey butter and cream were bywords for richness, so a name of this kind attached easily to any notably buttery cake. What is certain is the type — a small, eggy, fruit-studded butter cake leavened only by beating, of the sort that dominated English cake-making before baking powder became cheap and reliable in the second half of the century. The ground rice, the sifted loaf sugar and the careful listing of candied lemon and angelica all place it in that older tradition, as does the "probable cost" of 1s. 3d., a figure Cassell's supplied throughout so a household could weigh a recipe against its weekly budget.