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QUEEN CAKES (another way) (Take a pound of powdered sugar)
Take a pound of powdered sugar, a pound of well-dried flour, a pound of butter, eight eggs, and half a pound of currants, washed and picked; grate a nutmeg, and an equal quantity of mace and cinnamon; work the butter to a cream, put in the sugar, beat the whites of the eggs twenty minutes, and mix them with the butter and sugar; then beat the yolks for half an hour, and put them to the butter. Beat the whole together, and when it is ready for the oven put in the flour, spices, and currants. Sift a little sugar over the cakes, and bake in tins.
A pound-cake batter in the old proportion, leavened by nothing but beaten egg. The whole recipe hangs on how much air you get into the eggs, so read the mixing notes before you start.
- No leavening at allThere is no baking powder here, and none should be added if you want the dense, close crumb the recipe intends. The rise comes entirely from air whipped into the whites and yolks, which is why the beating times are so extravagant.
- Those beating timesTwenty minutes for the whites and half an hour for the yolks assume a hand whisk and a strong arm. With a stand mixer, whites take 3-4 minutes to firm peaks and yolks 5-6 minutes until pale and thickly ribboning. Judge by appearance, not the clock.
- Powdered sugarIn Victorian usage this means ordinary sugar crushed and sifted fine, not modern confectioners' sugar with its cornstarch. Caster sugar is the right substitute; use icing sugar only for the dusting at the end.
- Well-dried flourFlour was warmed and dried by the fire to drive off damp from storage. Modern bagged flour needs nothing beyond sifting.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants. Washing and picking removed grit and stems; today just check for stalks and toss them in a spoonful of the flour so they do not sink.
- SpicesA whole grated nutmeg comes to roughly 2 to 3 teaspoons. "An equal quantity of mace and cinnamon" may mean that much again of each, or that much of the two together; the text does not settle it. On either reading the spicing is assertive by current taste, and half the quantity still reads clearly as a spiced cake.
- Oven and tinsNo temperature is given. Small cakes of this kind bake at 350F for 18-25 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean. "Tins" means small individual patty tins; a standard muffin tray works, filled two-thirds.
- YieldA pound each of flour, butter and sugar with eight eggs makes a very large batch, on the order of 30 to 36 small cakes. Halve it comfortably.
- Add the flour last and lightlyThe instruction to put in the flour only "when it is ready for the oven" is deliberate. Fold it in with a spatula and get the tins into the heat promptly, or the beaten egg collapses and the cakes bake heavy.
Queen cakes were a fixture of English baking from the eighteenth century onward: a rich pound-cake batter with currants and spice, baked in small individual tins rather than one large hoop, which puts them among the forerunners of the modern cupcake. The name is generally traced to a royal association, most often Queen Anne or Elizabeth I, though no such connection is documented and the attribution should be treated as traditional; heart-shaped queen cake tins were common enough that the shape is often associated with the dish. That a Victorian household dictionary of cookery could print several versions under "another way" suggests how familiar the cake had become. The lavish egg-beating is the mark of a pre-baking-powder formula still being printed in an era that had chemical leaveners.