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Rice Cake
The following is a very light rice cake. Take a quarter of a pound of flour, six ounces of rice-flour, twelve ounces of sugar, twelve eggs, and the raspings of two lemons; separate the whites from the yolks of the eggs, whisk up the whites to a strong froth; then mix in the yolks, pounded sugar, and lemon raspings. Whisk this over a slow fire for about half an hour; when it is quite light and thick take it off the fire, and whisk it till it is quite cold, then stir in the flour and rice. Bake the cake in paper cases in a moderate heat; then put four or five sheets of paper under them, and ice before baking.
A whisked sponge with no chemical leavening at all — twelve eggs beaten warm over the fire are the only lift it gets. Everything depends on how that foam is built and how gently the flours go in.
- The hinge: warm, not hotWhisking over a "slow fire" for about half an hour warms the beaten eggs — probably to somewhere around blood heat — which thickens the foam and makes it more stable. A bowl over barely simmering water, off the direct heat, and constant motion; if the mixture stops moving against the metal it will scramble and the cake is finished before it starts. A stand mixer will do the second stage — whisking until cold — in five to eight minutes rather than half an hour.
- RaspingsThe grated outer zest of the lemons, scraped off with a rasp. Two lemons' worth of zest, no pith and no juice.
- Pounded sugarLoaf sugar crushed fine in a mortar; use caster or superfine sugar. Twelve ounces is about 1 3/4 cups.
- Rice-flourFinely milled white rice flour, not the sweet glutinous kind and not ground rice, which is coarser. It has no gluten, so it keeps the crumb short and dry. Weigh rather than measure: 4 oz flour (a scant cup) and 6 oz rice flour (roughly 1 1/4 cups).
- Folding the floursSift them together and fold in with a spatula in three additions once the foam is cold. Stirring, as written, will knock the air out; there is nothing else to raise this cake.
- Moderate heat350F. Small paper cases will take 20–25 minutes; a single large cake in a lined 9-inch pan, 40–50 minutes, until the top springs back.
- The extra sheets of paperLayers of paper under the cases insulate the bottoms from a hot brick oven floor. In a modern oven, a doubled baking sheet or an inverted tray on a lower rack does the same job, and is only worth doing if your oven runs hot underneath.
- Icing before bakingThe recipe does not say what icing; a thin sugar-and-egg-white icing brushed on raw will dry to a crisp white shell as the cake bakes. It needs the gentler end of the oven or it will color; if it browns, drop the temperature to 325F and add time.
- YieldTwelve eggs and nearly a pound and a half of flour, rice-flour and sugar together (22 oz in all) make a large quantity — perhaps 24 to 30 small paper cases, or two 9-inch cakes. Halving it works perfectly well.
Rice flour turns up constantly in Victorian baking, and this is one of the plainest demonstrations of why: with no gluten to toughen it, a rice cake stays tender, useful in a household with no refrigeration. The method — an egg foam whisked over gentle heat until it thickens, then whisked cold before the flours are folded in — is close to the technique the French call genoise, though here the whites are whisked separately before the yolks go in, and the book gives the method no name. Icing a cake before it goes into the oven is an older confectioner's habit that has largely disappeared; it produced a hard, matte white surface, quite unlike the soft glaze of a cake iced after cooling. "Raspings" reflects the tool rather than the result: zest was taken with a tin rasp or grater before the modern fine grater existed.