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Irish Luncheon Cakes
Mix two pounds of dried flour with a quarter of a pound of powdered sugar and a tea-spoonful of salt. Rub into the flour a quarter of a pound of fresh butter, and add half a pound of clean currants, an ounce of candied peel, and a tea-spoonful of carbonate of soda. Mix these ingredients with the whites of four eggs whisked to a stiff froth, and as much buttermilk as will make the dough of a moderate firmness. Half fill buttered tins, and bake in a tolerably quick oven to a light brown. Time, one hour to bake. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. Sufficient for two cakes.
A plain buttermilk-and-soda cake, closer to a large sweet soda bread than to a creamed sponge. Two pounds of flour makes a great deal, and the method depends entirely on speed once the buttermilk goes in.
- Work fast once the liquid is inThe only leavening is soda reacting with the acid in the buttermilk, and it begins the moment the two meet. Mix to a rough dough, get it into the tins and into the oven without pausing to tidy the bowl.
- "Dried flour"Victorian kitchens warmed flour by the fire to drive off damp before baking. Modern bagged flour needs nothing done to it; use 2 lb (about 7 cups) of plain flour as it comes.
- Powdered sugarIn this book that means sugar ground fine, not the cornstarch-blended confectioners' sugar sold now. Caster or superfine sugar is the equivalent; 4 oz is about half a cup.
- Carbonate of sodaPlain bicarbonate of soda, i.e. baking soda. One teaspoon for 2 lb of flour is a light hand by modern standards; the cake will be dense and close-textured rather than airy, which is what it is meant to be.
- Oven temperature"tolerably quick" is conventionally reckoned somewhere around 400F, though the book gives no figures and such terms are imprecise. For a cake this size a full hour at that heat may darken the crust badly, so 375F is safer, with a skewer test at 45 minutes.
- Buttermilk quantityThe original leaves this to judgement. Expect somewhere between 1 1/2 and 2 1/2 cups for 2 lb of flour, added gradually until the dough holds together but is still soft enough to spread in the tin.
- Egg whites onlyThe four whites are whisked stiff and mixed in for lift; the recipe says nothing about what became of the yolks. If you would rather not waste them, whole eggs will work but give a heavier, yellower crumb.
- Tins and yieldThe recipe gives no tin size; "half fill buttered tins" implies tins with room to spare. The stated yield is two cakes, and halving the whole recipe for one cake is entirely reasonable.
- Candied peelOne ounce is roughly two tablespoons, chopped fine. Buy peel in pieces rather than the pre-diced sort if you can, and toss it with the currants and a little of the flour so it disperses.
Soda and sour milk were a mainstay of Irish home baking through the nineteenth century, when griddle and pot-oven baking was widespread and a leavening that acted at once was useful. Cassell's dresses that domestic technique up for the English table: sugar, butter, currants and candied peel turn the everyday soda loaf into something fit to cut for luncheon. The costing of 1s. 6d. for two cakes is typical of the book, which quoted prices so that a housekeeper could judge a dish against her weekly budget before she committed the flour to it.