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Saucer Cake
Mix a quarter of a pound of flour with a quarter of a pound of best arrowroot. Beat four ounces of butter to cream, add the same weight of powdered sugar, the flour and arrowroot, one ounce of candied peel finely shredded, and two well-whisked eggs. beat the mixture till it is smooth and light, put it into a shallow dish lined with buttered paper, and bake in a moderate oven. If the cake is put in an airtight tin, it will keep good for some time. Time to bake, an hour or more. Probable cost, 1s. 2d.
A plain creamed cake with half its flour replaced by arrowroot, baked flat in a shallow dish. The texture is the point: short, close and biscuit-like rather than risen.
- The arrowroot is the hingeArrowroot has no gluten, so half the structure is missing by design and the crumb comes out tender and slightly powdery, close to shortbread. Do not substitute cornflour without expecting a chalkier result, and do not replace it with more flour or you lose the character of the cake entirely.
- No raising agentThere is no baking powder here, and only two eggs to half a pound of dry ingredients. All the lift comes from creaming the butter and sugar thoroughly and from the whisked eggs, so the beating stage is not optional. Expect a cake barely an inch thick.
- Weights in modern termsA quarter pound of flour is about 115 g (roughly 1 cup), the same again of arrowroot, 115 g butter and 115 g sugar. One ounce of candied peel is about 30 g, a scant quarter cup shredded.
- Powdered sugarIn Victorian usage this means finely ground white sugar, not modern icing sugar with its cornflour. Caster sugar is the direct equivalent and creams properly with butter.
- "A shallow dish lined with buttered paper"The name most likely refers to baking it in something saucer-shaped and wide, though the recipe itself says only 'a shallow dish'. A 20-23 cm round tin lined with buttered parchment gives the right proportion; anything deeper will leave the centre underdone while the edges dry.
- Oven and timeA moderate oven is usually reckoned at around 350F / 175C. The stated hour or more suits a slow coal range; in a modern oven a cake this thin is usually done in 35-45 minutes, when it is pale gold, firm to the touch and a skewer comes out clean. Judge by colour, not the clock.
- KeepingThe advice about an airtight tin is sound and worth following. Let it cool completely first, or trapped steam will soften the surface.
- YieldOne flat cake cutting into eight to ten wedges.
Arrowroot cakes and puddings run all through nineteenth-century English cookery books, and their popularity says as much about the chemist's shop as the kitchen: arrowroot, imported chiefly from St Vincent and elsewhere in the West Indies, was sold as an invalid and infant food, prized as light and easily digested. Cakes made with it carried that same reputation for delicacy. The name appears to describe the shape - a wide, shallow round baked in a saucer or flat dish. The candied peel is the only flourish, and the recipe records the probable cost as 1s. 2d.