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Orange Cake
Blanch two ounces of sweet almonds, and pound them in a mortar with a little white of egg; mix with them two ounces of powdered sugar, two well-beaten eggs, and the yolks of two hard-boiled ones which have been made smooth with the back of a wooden spoon. Slice four ounces of fresh butter into six ounces of flour, add the almond mixture and two or three spoonfuls of milk, enough to make a firm paste. Roll this out in a round form, about a quarter of an inch thick, and ornament the edge with a thick twist, made of the trimmings of the pastry. Bake on buttered paper in a moderate oven until the cake is lightly browned, and when nearly cool spread upon it a mixture made as follows. Beat thoroughly the yolks of four eggs and the white of one. Rub two ounces of loaf sugar upon the yellow rind of two oranges; crush the sugar to powder, and mix it with the eggs. Add the strained juice of the oranges, and stir the mixture over the fire until it begins to thicken. When it is nearly cool, add two tea-spoonfuls of powdered sugar and the well-whisked whites of two eggs. Before serving, an orange peeled and quartered may be laid upon the cake in the form of a star. This cake is very good when made of ordinary pastry. Time, about half an hour to bake the cake. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
This is a flat almond shortcrust round finished with an orange curd, not a sponge cake in the modern sense. The pastry and the topping are two separate operations, and the topping is where it can go wrong.
- The hinge: do not let the orange mixture boilYolks, sugar and orange juice thickened over direct heat will scramble the moment they pass roughly 180F. Use a heavy pan over low heat, or a bowl over simmering water, and stir constantly until it coats the spoon.
- Moderate ovenRead this as roughly 350F (period 'moderate' is usually equated to about 350-375F). The recipe's own half hour should give the light browning it asks for on a quarter-inch round.
- Loaf sugar on the rindLoaf sugar was hard cone or cube sugar. Rubbing a lump over the orange until it turns yellow and oily was the standard way to capture the zest oil before microplanes; sugar cubes work identically, or simply zest the oranges finely into granulated sugar.
- Hard-boiled yolks in pastrySieved cooked yolks turn up in a number of period pastry recipes; they add richness and are generally said to help keep the dough short and tender, though this recipe gives no reason for them.
- Buttered paperParchment on a flat baking sheet. The cake is baked free-form, not in a tin, and the twisted rope of trimmings the recipe calls an ornament would also help hold the topping on the round.
- Blanching almondsPour boiling water over them, stand a minute, and the skins slip off. Pounding with a little egg white keeps them from turning oily; a food processor does the same job if you pulse rather than grind continuously.
- Raw whites in the toppingThe two whisked whites folded in at the end are never cooked. Anyone serving this to young children, the elderly, pregnant women or the immune-compromised should use pasteurised whites.
- Vague measures"Two or three spoonfuls of milk" means enough to bring the dough together, no more; add it a teaspoon at a time. The paste should be firm, not soft.
- Yield and costThe recipe gives five or six portions; no diameter is stated. The 1s. 6d. reads as a middling, not extravagant, dish.
Cassell's assembles a great many entries from the mixed English and French repertoire of the later nineteenth century, and this one sits closer to a French galette or open almond tart than to anything a modern reader would call a cake: a rolled round of enriched pastry, edged with a twist of its own trimmings, spread after baking with what is essentially orange curd lightened with beaten whites. Rubbing a sugar lump against the peel to draw out the rind oil appears in a number of Victorian cookery books; the same principle survives in the bar-room oleo saccharum. Imported oranges were widely available in British towns by this period, chiefly from Spain and the Mediterranean, and are treated here as an ordinary flavouring rather than a luxury.