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Rusk Cake
Crush a quarter of a pound of rusks to powder, the pass them through a colander. Beat the yolks of seven eggs till light, and add six ounces of powdered white sugar, a pinch of powdered cinnamon, three cloves powdered, and three ounces of blanched and pounded almonds. Beat the ingredients briskly together for twenty minutes. Add the powdered rusks, a table-spoonful of strained lemon-juice, and, lastly, the whites of all the eggs whisked to a firm froth. Beat the mixture thoroughly, put it into a buttered mould, and bake immediately. In order to ascertain whether or not the cake is done enough, try it with a skewer in the ordinary way, but do not do this until the cake looks firm, as it will be all the nicer if it is not moved about during the baking. Probable cost, 1s. 6d.
A flourless sponge in the Continental manner, leavened only by eggs and bound with dried rusk crumbs. The original assumes you know your own oven, so a few numbers are needed.
- What rusks areTwice-baked slices of a light enriched bread, dried hard — sold today as Holland rusk or, in a close cousin, zwieback. A quarter of a pound crushed and sieved gives roughly 1 to 1 1/4 cups of fine crumbs. Plain dried white bread crumbs work, but the cake will be less sweet and less tender.
- Oven and tinNo temperature is given; bake at 350F. A buttered 8-inch round tin or a 1 1/2-quart mould, dusted with a little of the rusk powder as well as buttered, releases the cake cleanly. Reckon 40 to 50 minutes.
- Bake immediately means itThere is no chemical raising agent here. All the lift comes from the beaten yolks and the whisked whites, so heat the oven before you start beating and get the mixture in as soon as the whites are folded through.
- Twenty minutes of beatingThat figure belongs to a hand whisk and a strong arm. In a stand mixer, six to eight minutes on medium-high brings the yolks and sugar to the pale, thick ribbon stage the instruction is aiming at.
- Pounded almondsThree ounces of blanched almonds ground fine — commercial almond flour is the direct substitute. If grinding your own, pulse with a spoonful of the measured sugar so the nuts do not turn oily and clump.
- Folding, not beating"Beat the mixture thoroughly" after the whites go in is the one place to disobey. Fold in a third of the whites to loosen the heavy yolk-and-crumb base, then fold the rest through in two additions and stop while a few streaks remain.
- TestingThe advice to leave the cake alone until it looks firm is sound: an egg-foam batter this dense will sink if jolted early. Wait until the top is set and coloured and the edges have begun to shrink before you put a skewer in.
- Yield and servingServes eight to ten. It is dry-textured, and takes well to fruit, a compote or a glass of sweet wine; a dusting of icing sugar suits it.
Rusk cakes belong to a broad European family of puddings and tortes built on dried bread rather than flour — thrift and texture at once, since rusk crumbs absorb liquid without going gluey and give a crumb closer to a nut torte than a sponge. The spicing of cinnamon, clove, almond and lemon is a common English and German cake seasoning of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the rusk itself points the same way: the word is generally taken to have come into English from Spanish or Portuguese rosca, a twist of bread, though the derivation is not certain, and by the Victorian period rusks were a staple of the invalid tray and the nursery as much as the cake tin. The costing of 1s. 6d. let a cook price a dish before committing seven eggs to it.