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Rum Cake
Take the yolks of twelve eggs, beat them up, and add three-quarters of a pint of cream, the same quantity of rum, and sugar to taste; add also the grated peel of a lemon. Butter a tin, pour the mixture in, and bake it till it is dry at the top; the cake may be iced or only strewn with sifted sugar, and ornamented with preserved cherries, etc., or whipped cream may be laid on the top.
Despite the name, this is not a cake in any modern sense: it is a rich baked custard, set with egg yolk alone and flavoured with a startling quantity of rum. Read it as a crème renversée and it behaves predictably.
- The measuresAn Imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so three-quarters of a pint is 15 fl oz (about 1 3/4 US cups) each of cream and rum. Sugar is left to taste; 4-6 oz (roughly 1/2 to 3/4 cup) suits the volume of liquid.
- The rum is the difficultyEqual parts spirit and cream is far more alcohol than a yolk custard sets comfortably around, and the mixture will be slack and slow to firm. Cutting the rum to a third of the cream, or reducing it briefly in a pan first, gives a custard that sets rather than weeps.
- No oven heat is givenCustard of this kind wants 325F and no hotter. Above that the yolks curdle and the surface blisters before the centre is set.
- Use a water bathStand the buttered tin in a roasting dish of hot water reaching halfway up the sides. The original omits this, and it does much to decide whether the dish comes out silky or grainy.
- "Till it is dry at the top"A poor test by current standards. Take it out when the outer two inches are set and the middle still trembles when the tin is nudged, around 45-60 minutes; carryover heat finishes the centre. Baked until genuinely dry throughout, it will be rubbery.
- Lemon peelGrate only the yellow zest. Warming the zest in the cream and letting it stand off the heat for ten minutes draws far more flavour than stirring it in raw.
- ServingChill thoroughly before decorating; the whipped cream, cherries or sifted sugar go on cold. Fifteen fluid ounces of cream and twelve yolks make a generous dish for eight to ten, served in wedges or spoonfuls from the tin.
This is a set custard dressed up for the table under a fashionable name. "Rum cake" appears to have been used loosely in nineteenth-century British cookery, sometimes for a yeast baba soaked in spirit, sometimes for a baked or moulded cream like this one, closer to the German and Danish rum pudding than to anything with flour in it. Rum was widely available in Victorian Britain, which may help account for the lavish hand with it here. The finishing touches - icing, sifted sugar, preserved cherries, whipped cream - are the standard vocabulary of late-Victorian sweet garnish, applied here to a dish whose real interest is entirely in the custard beneath.