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SPONGECAKES (various recipes)
No. 1.--Break seven eggs, and put the whites and the yolks into separate bowls. Take out the specks, and beat the yolks of the eggs, add half a pound of powdered and sifted sugar, the grated rind and strained juice of half a lemon, six ounces of dried flour, and lastly the whites of the eggs whisked to a firm froth. Grease a hot tin with butter free from moisture. While still warm, sift sugar upon it, pour in the batter, and bake the cake in a moderate oven. Time to bake, three-quarters of an hour to one hour. Probable cost, 1s. 2d. for a cake this size. No. 2.--Bruise half a pound of vanilla, tie it in muslin, and simmer it gently with a pound of loaf sugar till the syrup is clear and pleasantly flavoured. Strain it through a jelly-bag, and stir it till cool. Beat the whites of three eggs to a firm froth, stir them into the syrup, add the well-beaten yolks of six eggs, and lastly six ounces of dried flour. When the batter is thoroughly mixed, pour it into a well-oiled mould, and bake the cake immediately in a well-heated oven. If liked, the syrup can be flavoured with lemon-rind instead of vanilla. Time to bake, about an hour. No. 3.--Take three eggs and their weight in flour, and four eggs and their weight in sugar. Put the yolks of the seven eggs and the sugar into a saucepan, and beat them over a gentle fire till they are new-milk-warm. Pour them into a basin, and put with them a table-spoonful of brandy and any flavouring that may be preferred. Stir them well together, and dredge the flour in very gradually, beating the mixture all the time. Whisk the whites of the eggs to a solid froth, stir them into the batter, and beat it again for a quarter of an hour. Butter a mould, sprinkle powdered sugar upon it, pour in the cake, and put it immediately into a well-heated oven. Time to bake, about one hour and a half. Probable cost, 1s. 6d.
Three versions of the same idea: eggs, sugar and flour, with air as the only leavening. Nothing here rises unless the foam does the work, so how you beat and fold matters more than any other instruction on the page.
- The hinge: the foam is the leaveningThere is no baking powder in any of the three. Beat the yolk-and-sugar base until it is pale and falls in a ribbon, whisk the whites to firm but not dry peaks, and fold rather than stir once the flour is in. Overworking after the whites go in collapses the cake and no oven will save it.
- "Dried flour"Period recipes frequently call for flour to be warmed in a low oven and sifted before use, flour then being more prone to damp than modern bagged flour. Modern bagged flour needs only sifting; skip the drying.
- Oven temperatures"Moderate" is conventionally read as around 350F/175C, and "well-heated" as something hotter, perhaps 375-400F/190-200C, though such terms had no fixed value. For a foam cake, 350F is the safer reading of both, since the higher heat sets the crust before the centre has risen.
- Times are far too longTimes are long by modern standards -- Three-quarters of an hour to an hour and a half reflects deep tin moulds and unreliable coal ranges. A seven-egg batter in a shallower 9-inch tin will likely be done in 35-45 minutes; test with a skewer and by the cake pulling slightly from the sides rather than trusting the stated time.
- Egg sizeVictorian eggs generally ran smaller than today's large, so seven of theirs may be closer to five or six modern large eggs by weight. This matters most in No. 1, where the eggs are set against a fixed half a pound (225g) of sugar.
- Half a pound of vanilla (No. 2)This quantity cannot be taken at face value for pods, which even then were sold by the ounce at high cost; the figure is almost certainly an error or refers to a weaker vanilla preparation. Two or three split pods simmered with a pound of sugar and water will flavour the syrup properly. The lemon-rind variant the recipe offers is the more practical route.
- Loaf sugarRefined sugar sold as a hard cone, broken and pounded as needed. Ordinary granulated sugar is the equivalent for syrup-making; caster or icing sugar where the text says "powdered and sifted".
- No. 3's arithmeticNo. 3's weights -- "Three eggs and their weight in flour" and "four eggs and their weight in sugar" total the seven eggs the method goes on to use, so the recipe is consistent; it works out at roughly 150-180g flour to 200-240g sugar depending on egg size. Weigh the eggs in shell to set the flour and sugar, and use all seven eggs, whites separated.
- The warmed yolks in No. 3Beating yolks and sugar over gentle heat to blood warmth is the genoise principle: warm sugar dissolves and the foam holds more air. Keep it well below simmering and off direct heat if it starts to thicken at the edges, or you have sweet scrambled egg.
- Tin and yieldNo sizes are given; a batter of this size would suit roughly a 9-inch round tin or a deep 8-inch mould. Grease, then dust with sugar as directed; the sugar gives the thin crisp shell characteristic of a proper sponge.
Sponge cake belongs to a family of egg-foam cakes that spread across Europe well before chemical leavening: the Italian pan di Spagna, the French biscuit de Savoie and the English "savoy" or sponge biscuit all depend on the same trick of whipping eggs with sugar until they hold air. That such cakes were made at all is a measure of household labour, since a firm froth from seven eggs meant a long spell with a birch whisk or a wire ring, and the batter had to go into the oven the moment it was mixed, as Nos. 2 and 3 insist. Cassell's, a mass-market dictionary aimed at middle-class kitchens of the later nineteenth century, characteristically prints several versions side by side with costs attached: 1s. 2d. and 1s. 6d. were real sums, and the vanilla syrup in No. 2 marks that version as the luxurious one at a time when vanilla was among the most expensive flavourings a cook could buy.