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Spongecakes, Small
No. 1. Take eight eggs, with their weight in powdered sugar, and the weight of four of them in dried and sifted flour. Beat the yolks of the eggs with the sugar and whatever flavouring is approved for a quarter of an hour, stir in the flour lightly and gradually, and when it is smoothly mixed add the whites of the eggs whisked to a firm froth. Butter the tins, half fill them with the batter, sift powdered sugar over, and bake in a quick oven. Take the cakes out of the tins before they are cold, place them upside down on a sieve, and let them remain for an hour. Place them in a closely-covered tin canister to remain till wanted. The cakes must not be allowed to acquire much colour. No. 2.--Break five eggs, and put the yolks and the whites into separate bowls. Beat the yolks with half a pound of sugar till the mixture is light and smooth, add the whites whisked to a firm froth, four ounces of dried and sifted flour, and the grated rind and strained juice of one lemon. Put into tins, and bake as before. No. 3.--Break two eggs into a bowl. Beat them till light and frothy, add a tea-cupful of powdered sugar, and, gradually, a tea-cupful of dried flour. Put the batter into tins, and bake the cakes in a brisk oven. Time to bake, from ten to fifteen minutes.
Three versions of the same idea: a whole-egg foam carrying its own weight in sugar and half that in flour, with no chemical leaven at all. The batter is the entire structure, so how you fold and how hot the oven runs decide whether these rise or slump.
- Weighing by eggsVictorian recipes commonly weigh eggs in the shell, so eight eggs is roughly 1 lb (450 g) and "their weight in sugar" means about 1 lb of sugar; "the weight of four" is about 8 oz (225 g) flour. Modern large eggs run near 2 oz each, so weighing rather than counting keeps the proportions close -- though No. 2's five eggs to half a pound of sugar and four ounces of flour implies a somewhat smaller egg.
- Powdered sugarThis means finely ground granulated sugar, i.e. caster or superfine, not modern confectioners' sugar cut with cornstarch. Use caster in the batter; confectioners' sugar is acceptable only for the dusting over the top.
- Quick oven, pale cakeA "quick" or "brisk" oven is usually read as somewhere in the range of about 400-450F, which suits a small cake baked ten to fifteen minutes, but the instruction that the cakes must not colour much is the harder constraint. In a modern oven 400F is a practical compromise; watch them from eight minutes.
- The beatingA quarter of an hour of beating yolks with sugar by hand is about four to five minutes in a stand mixer, taken to the ribbon stage where the mixture falls in a thick pale band and holds its trace briefly.
- Order of foldingNote that No. 1 adds the flour before the whites, No. 2 after. Both work, but flour folded into the yolk base first is easier to incorporate without deflating; in either case fold with a spatula in as few strokes as will just clear the dry streaks.
- Dried and sifted flourFlour was dried by the fire because it stored damp in sacks. Bagged flour today needs no drying; sift it, and use plain flour, since any self-rising or added leaven will coarsen the crumb this method is built to keep fine.
- TinsHalf filling is right for small deep tins or madeleine and finger moulds; a standard muffin tin also works. Butter well and dust with flour or sugar, as an egg-foam batter with no fat in it grips.
- The sugar crustThe sifted sugar over the top sets into a thin crisp shell rather than acting as decoration alone. Turning the cakes upside down on a sieve for an hour presumably lets steam escape so that the crust stays dry.
- Yield and keepingYields can only be guessed, since no tin size is given: No. 1 might make something like two dozen small cakes, No. 2 proportionally fewer, No. 3 only a handful. The closely covered tin canister is sound advice: with no fat in the crumb these stale quickly and are best eaten the day they are baked, or kept for use in trifles.
Sponge cakes of this kind are among the older branches of European cake-making that rely on neither yeast nor, later, baking powder: everything rises on beaten egg, which is why the proportions are given as ratios of egg weight rather than in cups. The family includes the Italian pan di Spagna, the French biscuit de Savoie, and the finger-shaped "Savoy" or boudoir biscuits sold by British confectioners in the nineteenth century, which No. 1 resembles in its sugar dusting if not in its shape. That baking powder was by then widely sold makes the survival of these unleavened versions more telling, not less; the fine dry crumb they give is a different thing from a chemically raised cake, and it was the crumb wanted for trifles, charlottes and anything soaked in wine or syrup.