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QUEEN CAKES (another way) (Wash a pound of fresh butter)
Wash a pound of fresh butter in rose-water. Beat it to a cream, and mix with it first the whites of eight eggs which have been whisked to a solid froth, and afterwards the beaten yolks of the eggs. Add gradually a pound of dried flour, a pound of picked and dried currants, and a pound of powdered and sifted sugar, and beat the mixture well between every addition. Butter the queen-cake tins, or, failing these, some small tartlet-tins, half fill them with the batter, and bake in a brisk oven. Just before the cakes are put into the oven, sift a little finely-powdered sugar over them. Time to bake, fifteen to twenty minutes. Probable cost, 3s. 8d.
A pound cake in the literal sense — a pound each of butter, flour, sugar and currants — leavened by nothing but air beaten into the eggs. The batter's rise depends entirely on how well the whites hold, so work quickly once they go in.
- Washing butter in rose-waterNineteenth-century butter was often salty and carried residual buttermilk; kneading it under liquid rinsed both away and perfumed it faintly. With unsalted modern butter this step is optional, though a teaspoon or two of rose-water beaten into the creamed butter gives the same scent, which is the point of the exercise.
- Dried flourFlour was warmed in a low oven or before the fire to drive off damp before weighing. Bagged flour today needs no drying; just sift it.
- Powdered and sifted sugarThis means sugar crushed fine from a loaf; caster or superfine sugar is the equivalent. Modern powdered/icing sugar contains cornstarch and may give a slightly different texture. For the dusting over the tops, icing sugar is fine.
- Picked currants"Picked" meant removing stems and grit from unwashed dried currants. Buy them cleaned, but rinse and dry them thoroughly, then toss with a spoonful of the measured flour so they stay suspended.
- A brisk ovenAround 400–425F. Fifteen to twenty minutes suits small tins at that heat; test at fifteen, as this batter dries out fast once the edges colour.
- Queen-cake tinsSmall shallow tins, traditionally heart-shaped or fluted, roughly the size of a modern bun or muffin cup. A standard 12-cup muffin tin or tartlet tins work; fill only halfway as directed, since the whipped whites expand.
- Folding, not beatingThe instruction to "beat the mixture well between every addition" belongs to an older method, but it will knock the air out of the whites. Beat the butter and sugar hard, then fold in whites, yolks and flour with a light hand.
- YieldFour pounds of batter makes a great many cakes — roughly three to four dozen small ones. Halving or quartering the recipe is sensible for a modern household.
Queen cakes appear in English cookery from the early eighteenth century onwards and were among the most persistent of the small rich cakes, surviving in print for well over two hundred years. The origin of the name is uncertain; it is usually linked to the fashion for naming delicacies after royalty rather than to any particular queen. They were often baked in small heart-shaped tins, and are shown that way in some Victorian cookery manuals. The structure is a pound cake: equal weights of butter, flour, sugar and fruit, a formula that predates baking powder and relies on creamed butter and stiffly whisked eggs for lift. The rose-water is a survival of a much older English taste for floral flavouring, common in seventeenth-century baking and steadily displaced by vanilla and lemon over the nineteenth. Cassell's habit of quoting a "probable cost" — here 3s. 8d. — was aimed at a household budgeting for its cook, and marks this as an expensive cake, since a pound of fresh butter and a pound of currants were not trifling outlays.