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Nuns' Cake
Beat eight ounces of fresh butter to a cream; add half a pound of fine flour, a small nutmeg, grated, eight ounces of powdered sugar, the well-beaten yolks of four eggs, and a table-spoonful of cold water. Mix thoroughly, then stir in the whites of two of the eggs whisked to a solid froth. Work all briskly together for some minutes. Pour the mixture into a buttered mould, and, being careful to leave room for it to rise, bake in a moderate oven for about an hour. Probable cost, 1s. 4d. Sufficient for a quart mould.
A plain, dense pound-cake batter leavened only by air, so the beating matters more than anything else. Weigh rather than measure: the original is written in equal weights of butter, flour and sugar.
- The hinge: it rises on air aloneThere is no baking powder or soda here, and no yeast. The only lift comes from the butter beaten to a cream and the two whites whisked to a "solid froth", so beat the butter until genuinely pale. Note, though, that the recipe itself says to stir the whites in and then "work all briskly together for some minutes", not to fold them in gently.
- Weights in modern termsEight ounces butter is two US sticks (225 g); half a pound of flour is about 1 3/4 cups (225 g); eight ounces sugar is a little over 1 cup (225 g).
- "Powdered sugar" is not confectioners' sugarIn this period it means loaf sugar crushed and sifted fine, i.e. ordinary granulated or caster sugar. Modern powdered sugar contains cornstarch and will give a softer, pastier crumb.
- Moderate ovenThe book gives no temperatures; "moderate" is usually taken as somewhere around 325–350F (165–175C). At an hour in a deep mould the outside can set well before the centre; if it is browning fast, drop the heat and test with a skewer at 50 minutes.
- The mouldA quart mould is 4 cups, but the instruction to leave room to rise means you want a 6-cup (1.5 litre) tin or a small bundt-style mould. Butter it heavily and flour it; the batter is rich and clings.
- A whole small nutmegThat is roughly 2 teaspoons freshly grated, which is a great deal by current taste and is the cake's only real flavouring. Halve it if you want the butter to come through instead.
- Leftover whitesOnly two of the four whites are used. Keep the others for meringue or an omelette rather than adding them, which would thin the batter.
- YieldA small cake; thin slices from a quart mould. It keeps well wrapped for several days.
The name is old and its origin is traditional rather than documented: rich, spiced, keeping cakes of this kind were long associated with convent kitchens, which in Catholic Europe supplied confectionery and baked goods to the surrounding towns as a source of income. Whatever the connection, the formula itself is a straightforward pound cake of the type that dominated English baking before chemical leavening became reliable and cheap in the second half of the nineteenth century: equal weights of butter, sugar and flour, eggs beaten separately to trap air, and nutmeg as the one seasoning. Cassell's habit of quoting "probable cost" — here 1s. 4d. — was aimed at a middle-class housekeeper checking her cook's accounts.