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Sand Cake, with Marmalade
Take one pound of butter, half a pound of almonds blanched and pounded, the grated peel of a lemon, three-quarters of a pound of flour, four table-spoonfuls of pounded sugar, and seven eggs. Work these ingredients into a paste, roll out, and divide into three round cakes. Between each cake place a layer of any sort of marmalade at hand, and bake slowly; when half done, pour an icing over the whole, and finish baking.
A rich almond-butter paste rather than a batter, layered with marmalade and baked as one stacked cake. The proportions are unusual by modern standards and worth reading carefully before you start.
- Bake slowly, and mean it"slowly" in a Victorian oven is usually read today as somewhere around 300-325F. With a pound of butter and seven eggs the layers set gently; a hotter oven risks browning the outside long before the centre of the stack is cooked, and the marmalade between the layers may boil and run out the sides.
- The sugar is not a misprintFour tablespoons of pounded sugar to three-quarters of a pound of flour makes a barely sweet, shortbread-like paste. The marmalade and the icing carry the sweetness. If you increase the sugar you will get a different, softer cake that spreads rather than holding its shape.
- Pounded sugar and pounded almondsPounded sugar is sugar broken from the loaf and pounded down, roughly comparable to caster sugar. Pounded almonds means blanched almonds ground in a mortar to a coarse, slightly oily meal, which is closer to home-ground almonds than to fine commercial almond flour; a food processor pulsed in short bursts gives a similar texture.
- Working the pasteCream the butter first, then beat in eggs, almonds and lemon peel, and work the flour in last and briefly. Overworking the flour after the eggs go in gives a tough layer. The paste will be soft; chill it before rolling.
- Rolling and dividingThree rounds of roughly 8 inches, cut against a plate or tin lid, is a sensible reading. Roll between sheets of baking paper and chill the discs on the paper, as the paste is too rich to lift by hand.
- The icingThe recipe does not say what the icing is; the usual period pouring icing was whipped egg white beaten with sifted sugar and a little lemon juice, thin enough to pour. Going on at the halfway point, it has the oven's remaining heat to dry and set.
- MarmaladeIn this period "marmalade" could mean any stiff fruit preserve, apricot or quince as well as orange. A loose modern marmalade will soak into the layers; boil it down for a minute or two first, or use a thick-cut orange marmalade.
- Yield and timingThe original gives neither. As a rough guide only, expect a dense cake serving twelve to sixteen in thin wedges, with total baking of perhaps an hour and a quarter in a slow oven and the icing going on at the halfway point, as the recipe directs.
Sand cake is Sandkuchen or Sandtorte, a German and Austrian cake whose name describes its crumb: fine, dry and faintly gritty on the tongue, an effect traditionally got from potato starch or from ground almonds and a very high proportion of butter to liquid. It travelled into British cookery books through the nineteenth-century enthusiasm for Continental baking. This layered version, with preserve between the rounds and an icing baked on, sits closer to a Viennese torte than to the plain loaf-shaped sand cake more common in English kitchens. The instruction to use "any sort of marmalade at hand" suggests a cook who could be relied on to have some kind of preserve to hand.