Home › The Principles of Cookery › Montrose Cakes
Montrose Cakes
Beat a pound of fresh butter to a cream, with an equal weight of finely-sifted sugar. Whisk a dozen eggs for ten minutes, add them, with half a glassful of brandy, a little nutmeg, and a table-spoonful of rose-water, gradually, to the creamed butter. Beat the mixture for twenty minutes, dredging into it the whole of one pound of flour, well dried and sifted. If currants are liked, they can be added: three-quarters of a pound will be enough for these ingredients.
A pound-cake batter in the old style, leavened entirely by air beaten into butter and eggs. The beating is not optional padding — it is the whole rising mechanism.
- The hinge: beatingWith no baking powder, every bit of lift comes from air held in the creamed butter and the whisked eggs. In a stand mixer the twenty minutes of final beating can be cut to about eight to ten on medium, but do not shorten the creaming or fold the flour in casually — dredge it in a little at a time with the mixer running slow, as directed.
- Egg sizeTwelve eggs against a pound each of butter, sugar and flour is a rich, wet ratio by modern standards; eggs of the period are generally reckoned to have been smaller than today's large egg. If you prefer to weigh, use about 20 oz (570 g) of shelled egg, which is roughly eleven large eggs.
- "Half a glassful" of brandyThe glass meant is a wine glass of the period, usually reckoned at somewhere between 2 and 2.5 fl oz, so this is about 1 to 1¼ fl oz — two tablespoons or so. The measure is genuinely loose and a little more or less will not hurt the batter.
- Rose-waterModern rose waters vary a great deal in strength, and a concentrated one used by the tablespoon may dominate the cake; start with a teaspoon and taste the batter.
- Drying the flourFlour was dried before the fire to drive off damp from sacks and stone-floored larders. Bagged flour today needs nothing but sifting.
- CurrantsThree-quarters of a pound is a generous fruiting. Toss them in a spoonful of the measured flour first so they do not sink through a batter this soft.
- Oven and tinsThe recipe gives no oven, tin or time. As small cakes these are best baked in patty pans, paper cases or a shallow tin and cut in squares; a moderate oven, around 350°F (175°C), suits them — small cakes about 18–22 minutes, a shallow tray 35–40. Test with a skewer at the centre.
- YieldThe full quantity is a large batch — roughly 40 to 48 small cakes. Halving it works cleanly, since every ingredient is in round proportion.
Montrose is a coastal burgh in Angus, on the east Scottish shore, and a scatter of nineteenth-century cookery books attach its name to small rich cakes of this pound-cake type; the connection is traditional rather than documented, and no single originating baker can be pointed to. What the recipe does show plainly is how a rich cake was raised before chemical leaveners became domestic staples — a full pound of butter, a dozen eggs, and half an hour of arm work at the bowl, with the flour dredged in at the last moment so as not to knock the air out. The flavouring is brandy, grated nutmeg and rose-water. Collections of this kind gathered such regional names wholesale, often with little more than the name to identify their origin.