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Soda Cakes, Economical
No. 1.--Rub six ounces of good beef dripping into a pound of flour; add a pinch of salt, a tea-spoonful of mixed spice, a table-spoonful of caraway-seeds, and six ounces of moist sugar. Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly. Add a tea-spoonful of vinegar and a tea-spoonful of carbonate of soda dissolved in half a pint of lukewarm milk. Bake in a moderate oven. Probable cost, 4d. per pound. No. 2.--Rub eight ounces of good beef dripping into two pounds of flour; add a salt-spoonful of salt, six table-spoonfuls of sugar, six ounces of picked and dried currants, a little nutmeg or spice, three eggs, and a pint of lukewarm milk, in which a tea-spoonful of carbonate of soda has been dissolved. Mix thoroughly, and bake in a moderate oven. Time to bake, one hour or more, according to the size of the cakes. Probable cost, 6d. per pound.
Two versions of a plain rubbed-in cake leavened with soda rather than eggs and beating — cheap, sturdy baking of the sort sold by weight rather than by the slice. Both work as written, provided you get them into the oven quickly.
- Work fast once the soda is inThe soda is dissolved in warm milk and, in No. 1, met with vinegar; the lift begins immediately and does not wait. Have the tin greased and the oven up to heat before the liquid goes in, and mix only until combined.
- A moderate ovenBroadly 350F / 175C. The recipe gives "one hour or more, according to the size of the cakes" for No. 2, so smaller cakes will be at the shorter end; No. 1 is given no time at all.
- Beef drippingThe rendered fat saved from roast beef, and part of why these cakes were so cheap. It gives a savoury, slightly meaty note that is unfamiliar in a sweet cake today. Lard or butter substitutes directly by weight; butter will taste closest to a modern expectation.
- Moist sugarUnrefined soft brown sugar, damp and clumping — light or dark muscovado is the nearest thing on a shelf today. Ordinary soft light brown sugar is fine.
- Carbonate of sodaBicarbonate of soda, plain baking soda — not baking powder. In No. 1 the vinegar activates it; in No. 2 there is no acid at all beyond what is in the milk, so any faint soapy taste is best countered by using buttermilk or soured milk in place of the fresh.
- Imperial liquid measuresThese are imperial pints of 20 fl oz. Half a pint is 10 fl oz (about 1 1/4 US cups); the pint in No. 2 is 2 1/2 US cups. Using US pints will give a stiff, dry mixture.
- Salt-spoonfulUsually reckoned at about a quarter teaspoon; the Victorian salt-spoon was a small piece of tableware rather than a standardised measure.
- Mixed spiceThe British sweet blend — cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, coriander, sometimes clove and ginger. It is not the same as American apple pie spice but is close enough to substitute.
- Consistency and shapingThe mixture is stiff: a thick batter or soft dough rather than a pourable one. Bake in a lined tin, or spoon into rounds on a tray. No. 2, at two pounds of flour, makes a substantial quantity.
Soda cakes belong to the long nineteenth-century shift away from yeast and from the arm-aching egg-beating that raised a pound cake. Bicarbonate of soda became more cheaply and reliably available to British households over the middle decades of the century, and with it came a class of quick, unenriched baking that a cook could put together between other jobs. What marks these two out as economical is the dripping: the fat saved from a joint of roast beef, used here in place of butter. Cassell's habitually prints a "probable cost" -- fourpence and sixpence per pound respectively -- because the book was written for households where the difference mattered. The caraway seed in No. 1 places it in the older English seed-cake tradition, a flavour common in British baking then and much less so since.