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Sponge Cheesecakes
Crumble two ounces of stale spongecake, and soak it in a table-spoonful of milk; then beat together two ounces of sugar and one and a half ounces of butter for a few minutes; add a beaten egg and beat up again; then add the cake dissolved in milk, and a little lemon juice or other flavouring; lastly, add half a tea-spoonful of baking powder. Make a good short paste and line some patty-pans with it. Three-parts fill them with the mixture to give it space to rise. Some currants may be sprinkled on top. Bake in a brisk oven until nicely browned.
A small tartlet with a sponge-crumb filling, and no cheese in it at all. The recipe is short but assumes a good deal of Victorian kitchen shorthand.
- Patty-pansThese are shallow tartlet tins, roughly 2 to 2.5 inches across. A standard 12-hole bun or shallow muffin tin does the job; a deep American muffin pan does not, as the pastry sides will be too tall for the small quantity of filling.
- A brisk ovenRead this as a hot oven, around 400-425F (200-220C). Small pastry cases want fast heat so the shortcrust sets before the butter runs. Watch from about 12 minutes; 15 to 20 is usually enough for nicely browned tops.
- Short pastePlain shortcrust, made rich rather than flaky: about 8 oz flour to 4 oz butter with a pinch of salt and cold water to bind. That quantity lines a dozen tins with a little to spare.
- Stale spongecakeThe staleness matters, since fresh sponge is too moist and will clag rather than crumble. Any plain unfrosted sponge, madeira or pound cake works; leave it out overnight or dry the crumbs briefly in a low oven.
- The baking powder goes in lastThe recipe adds it after everything else, so mix it in, fill the cases, and get them into the oven without delay rather than letting the raising power spend itself in the bowl.
- Three-parts fullThe instruction is worth obeying. The mixture rises a good deal for its size, and overfilled cases spill and stick to the tin.
- FlavouringLemon juice is the default here; a little grated zest with it gives more character, as the juice alone mostly disappears in baking. Currants scattered on top will brown quickly, so check they are not scorching.
- YieldThe recipe gives no number; the quantities suggest roughly a dozen small tartlets, depending on tin size. Best eaten the day they are made, when the pastry is still crisp against the soft filling.
The name is the puzzle: these contain no cheese, and neither do lemon cheesecakes, almond cheesecakes or any number of similar Victorian tartlets. The word had drifted. Medieval and early modern cheesecakes genuinely were made with curds, but by the eighteenth century the term was often being applied to small open tarts with a soft, rich filling baked in a pastry case — curd versions carried on in print alongside them — and cooks kept the name long after the curd had been replaced by ground almonds, lemon and butter, or, as here, leftover sponge. That last point is the real character of this recipe. Cassell's is quietly relentless about using things up, and a couple of ounces of dried-out cake was too valuable to throw away when it could be soaked in milk and turned into a dozen tartlets for tea.