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Soda Cake
No. 1.--Rub a quarter of a pound of butter into a pound of flour; then add a pinch of salt, a quarter of a pound of stoned raisins, or half a pound of picked and dried currants, half a pound of powdered sugar, and a quarter of a grated nutmeg. Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly. Dissolve a tea-spoonful of carbonate of soda in a tea-cupful of warm milk. Whisk three fresh eggs, and mix them with the milk. Beat all well together for a few minutes. Butter the tins, and line them with oiled paper. Pour in the mixture, and bake the cakes in a well-heated, steady oven. If a richer cake is required, the quantity of butter should be increased. As a variety, a quarter of a pound of candied peel or one ounce of pounded sweet almonds may be substituted for the currants, but then a little more soda will be needed. It should be remembered that the cake should be put into the oven immediately after the soda is added, and that it should be thoroughly baked. When done enough, turn it out carefully, and let it rest in a slanting position on the edge of a basin till cool. If liked, the batter can be spread half an inch deep in a shallow pan, then cut into squares when done enough. If this plan is adopted, the cake will be baked in twenty minutes. Time to bake, one large cake, one hour and three-quarters; two small cakes, one hour each. Probable cost, 8d. per pound.
A plain Victorian fruit cake leavened chemically rather than with yeast or long beating. The instructions are sound, but two things need translation: the sugar and the soda.
- Get it into the oven at onceThe recipe says it and means it: carbonate of soda begins releasing gas the moment it meets warm liquid. Have the tins buttered and lined before the milk goes in, and mix only until combined.
- Soda with nothing acid to work onSoda with little acid to work on -- There is no buttermilk, cream of tartar or treacle here, only the mild acidity of the milk, so plain bicarbonate gives a modest lift and can leave a faint soapy, yellowish note. A modern cook may substitute baking powder, bearing in mind it is considerably weaker by weight than bicarbonate, or sour the teacupful of milk or use buttermilk.
- Powdered sugarIn this period that means finely ground granulated sugar, what we would call caster sugar. It is not modern confectioners' sugar, which contains cornstarch.
- Weights and vesselsA pound is 450 g, so this is 450 g flour, 115 g butter, 225 g sugar. A teacupful is roughly 6 fl oz (175 ml) rather than a full US cup. Oiled paper is baking parchment.
- OvenThe book gives no temperature. A "well-heated, steady oven" for a cake of this kind is usually read as somewhere around 325-350F (165-175C); drop the heat if the top colours before the middle sets. The shallow-pan version at half an inch deep can take the same heat for its twenty minutes.
- TimingAn hour and three-quarters suits a deep tin in a coal-range oven. In a modern oven, start testing well before the stated time: a skewer should come out clean and the cake should have pulled slightly from the tin.
- Nutmeg and dried fruitA quarter of a whole nutmeg grated fresh is assertive but correct for the period. Currants should be tossed in a spoonful of the measured flour so they do not sink.
- CoolingThe slanting position on the edge of a basin let air reach the sides of a cake turned out with no rack beneath it. A wire rack does the same job.
- YieldOne large cake or two small ones; the dry ingredients alone come to over 2 lb, so expect a finished large cake nearer 3 lb.
Soda cakes belong to the middle decades of the nineteenth century, when purified bicarbonate of soda became cheap and reliable enough for domestic use and cooks could raise a cake in minutes rather than waiting on yeast or beating eggs for half an hour. The method demonstrates the principle plainly: dry ingredients rubbed and mixed, the soda dissolved separately and added last, the batter into the oven at once. The result sits between a plain cake and a bun loaf, and it carries a cost note of eightpence a pound. Commercial baking powders, generally traced to British and American formulations of the 1840s and 50s, would eventually make the separate dissolving of soda unnecessary, but recipes like this one persisted in print long after.