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Raspberry and Pistachio Cake
Make a mixture as for MADEIRA CAKE, and to each half pound of flour used in the mixture take an ounce of pistachios, a heaped tea-spoonful of raspberry jam, and some red and green colouring. When the cake mixture is ready, divide it, and add the blanched and chopped pistachios and some green colouring to one half, and the red colouring with the jam, passed through a hair sieve, to the other half. Then butter and paper a baking-tin, and put the two preparations in, a spoonful at a time, in irregular lumps. Bake steadily, that the outside may not get dark. A square shallow tin should be used, and the cake cut in slices for serving. For a better cake the top may be iced, and some crystallised raspberries and shredded nuts used for the garnishing.
A marbled pound cake that depends on a recipe printed elsewhere in the book: the Madeira mixture, which is the standard English creamed batter of equal weights butter, sugar, eggs and flour, usually with a little lemon zest. Everything here is about colour and restraint.
- The base mixtureFollow the book's own Madeira cake recipe. Victorian Madeira mixtures are generally in the region of half a pound each of butter and sugar and four eggs to half a pound or more of flour, creamed and folded in the usual way, and many versions carry lemon rind; if the book's does, leave it in, as it keeps the two coloured halves from tasting merely sweet.
- "Bake steadily"The instruction points to a moderate oven that will not colour the surface before the centre sets; in a modern oven something around 325°F (160°C) suits, and resist going higher. A pale crust is the point, since browning would muddy the pink and green.
- Tin and timingA square shallow tin around 20 cm, buttered and lined, is about right; expect a shallow cake of a few centimetres and roughly 45-55 minutes. Test with a skewer in the centre. Cut into fingers or slices, about 12-16 pieces.
- Hair sieveA fine-meshed sieve of horsehair, used here only to strain the seeds and lumps out of the jam so it streaks smoothly through the batter. Any fine nylon or stainless sieve does the same job; press the jam through with the back of a spoon.
- The colouringsVictorian kitchens used cochineal for red and spinach greening or a spinach-based paste for green. Modern gel food colours are far stronger: add them on a cocktail stick, a trace at a time, since the batter darkens slightly on baking.
- Jam quantityA heaped teaspoon per half pound of flour is tiny, and deliberately so. It is there to tint and perfume the pink half, not to sweeten it; more jam makes that portion heavy and damp.
- PistachiosAn ounce is about 30 g. Blanch shelled nuts in boiling water for a minute and rub off the skins in a cloth, which is what gives the bright green; skin-on nuts look brown and dull the effect.
- MarblingSpoon the two batters into the tin in alternating irregular lumps and leave them alone. Stirring or swirling with a knife tends to blend the pink and green into a single muddy colour.
Marbled and party-coloured cakes appear often in late-Victorian and Edwardian baking, when a plain pound cake could be dressed up for the tea table without extra richness. Cassell's builds this one on Madeira cake, the firm English creamed sponge whose name is generally traced, though on tradition rather than documentary evidence, not to any ingredient but to the wine said to have been served alongside a slice in the mid-nineteenth century. Pistachios were a costly import and, along with the crystallised raspberries suggested for the top, mark this as a cake for company rather than the family; the instruction to keep the outside pale is a reminder that in a coal range, oven control was the cook's chief skill and the difference between a showpiece and a scorched slab.