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Padeia Cake
Beat two ounces of fresh butter to a cream, mix with it four ounces of ground rice, four ounces of flour, two ounces of currants, washed, picked, and dried, two ounces of muscatel raisins, chopped fine, a small pinch of salt, two ounces of crushed loaf sugar, and a quarter of a nutmeg, grated. When the dry ingredients are thoroughly blended, make them into a dough, by stirring into them half a pint of lukewarm milk, in which has been dissolved a salt-spoonful of carbonate of soda, and which has been flavoured by the addition of three or four drops of the essence of almonds. Line a mould with well-oiled paper, three-parts fill it with the dough, and bake in a moderate oven. Time, about one hour to bake the cake. Probable cost, 8d. Sufficient for a small mould.
A plain rice-flour fruit cake from the era when carbonate of soda was still a novelty in home baking. The measurements are small and the method is unforgiving of a slack batter.
- Half a pintCassell's is a British book, so half an imperial pint is 10 fl oz, or 1¼ US cups. That is a lot of liquid for 8 oz of dry flours: expect a thick pourable batter rather than a dough you could handle, despite the wording.
- Ground riceThis is rice flour, sold as such today. The coarser "ground rice" gives a faintly sandy crumb, which is part of the character of these cakes; fine rice flour makes a smoother, softer result.
- Loaf sugarSugar came as a hard cone that was broken and crushed at home. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct substitute, 2 oz by weight.
- Salt-spoonfulThe old salt-spoon holds roughly a quarter teaspoon. That is the right order of magnitude for baking soda here, though see the next point about what it has to react with.
- The soda has no acidThis is the hinge. Carbonate of soda needs an acid to lift anything, and there is none in the list — the milk is sweet, not sour. Dissolving the soda in the milk and baking promptly gives only a little lift and can leave a soapy edge; a modern cook would use baking powder in the same quantity instead.
- Essence of almondsThree or four drops of modern almond extract. Nineteenth-century almond essence was often distilled from bitter almonds and was genuinely potent, which is why the recipe counts drops rather than spoonfuls.
- Oven and tin"Moderate oven" is conventionally rendered as somewhere around 325-350F, though the book gives no temperature and period ovens were not calibrated. Line a 1 lb loaf tin or a 6-inch round tin with parchment rather than oiled paper, and fill it no more than three-quarters, as the recipe directs. About an hour at that heat suits this size; test with a skewer from 50 minutes.
- Muscatel raisinsLarge seeded dessert raisins, chopped because they were sticky and full of pips. Any good large raisin works; chop them so they suspend in the thin batter instead of sinking.
- Yield"Sufficient for a small mould" means a single small loaf, perhaps six to eight thin slices.
The name is a puzzle: "Padeia" appears in Cassell's without explanation, and Victorian cookery dictionaries carried many such fanciful cake names that are rarely traceable afterwards. What is legible is the technique. Ground rice was cheap, kept well, and gave the short, slightly dry crumb that suited tea cakes, and the raising here is carbonate of soda dissolved in milk with nothing acid for it to work against. The book also gives a probable cost, here 8d.