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Swiss Cream Cakes
Mix a pinch of salt and half a tea-spoonful of bicarbonate of soda in a spoonful of hot water; add half a tin of Swiss condensed milk, and two ounces and a half of butter, half an ounce of lard, and an ounce of castor sugar that have been beaten well together, then beat all for some minutes. Add half a tea-spoonful of essence of vanilla, the same of essence of musk or rose, and the whites of six eggs that have been whipped to a stiff froth--adding the whites a spoonful at a time. Take seven ounces of Vienna flour and the same of English flour, mixed, and add it from time to time. Do not beat, but blend thoroughly. Bake in three round cake-tins to a pale brown; the tins should be well buttered. While the cakes are baking, mix half a grated cocoa-nut with the whites of two eggs and enough sugar to make a rather stiff mixture. Put this icing on the tops of the cakes after they have become cool, and put them back in the oven for a minute to let it set. Probable cost, 1s. 8d.
A late-Victorian sponge-style layer cake built on tinned condensed milk rather than fresh, with a coconut meringue top. Most of the work is in the folding, and two of the flavourings no longer exist in a domestic kitchen.
- Half a tin of condensed milkVictorian tins of Swiss condensed milk were commonly around a pound, so half a tin is roughly 7 oz (200 g) of sweetened condensed milk, about half a modern 397 g can. It is sweetened, which probably explains why only an ounce of sugar goes into the batter.
- Essence of muskThis was a real Victorian flavouring, based on deer musk or its synthetic imitations, and it is not sold as a food flavouring now. Use the rose given as its alternative, or leave it out; the vanilla carries the cake.
- Vienna flour and English flourVienna flour was a finely milled, comparatively strong Hungarian-Austrian wheat flour, prized for cakes and rolls; English household flour of the period was softer. The mix of the two amounts to about 14 oz (400 g) total, and plain all-purpose flour, or all-purpose with an ounce or two of bread flour, stands in reasonably.
- The hinge: blend, do not beatThe whites are the only real lift here, so the instruction to add them a spoonful at a time and then fold rather than beat in the flour is the whole recipe. Knock the air out and you get three flat discs.
- The soda does littleBicarbonate of soda needs an acid, and there is almost none in this batter beyond a trace in the condensed milk. Dissolving it in hot water as directed spreads it evenly; do not increase it, or the cakes will taste soapy.
- Oven and tinsThe recipe gives no oven heat, only the instruction to bake 'to a pale brown'; a moderate oven, in modern terms somewhere around 350F (175C), suits it. Three well-buttered round tins of 7 or 8 inches will likely take something in the region of 20-25 minutes; test with a skewer rather than by colour alone, since the condensed milk browns early.
- The coconut icingHalf a grated coconut is about 4 oz (110 g) of fresh grated flesh; unsweetened desiccated coconut works, though it drinks more egg white. One minute back in the oven only sets the surface, so if the raw whites concern you, use pasteurised whites or dry the topping at 250F until firm throughout.
- YieldThree thin layers. Since the icing goes on the tops of the cakes and no filling is mentioned, they appear to be served as separate iced cakes rather than stacked.
The "Swiss" in the title belongs to the milk, not to the cake. Condensed milk reached British kitchens through the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company, founded at Cham in 1866 and later merged into Nestle, and "Swiss milk" became such a common shop term that recipe writers used it as a plain ingredient name well into the twentieth century. The tinned product still felt novel: it was shelf-stable, pre-sweetened, and let a household bake a rich cake without a daily milk delivery or a separate sugar allowance. The Vienna flour and the essence of musk point the other way, to the ambitious continental baking of the 1870s and 1880s, when English cooks bought imported Austro-Hungarian flour for fine cakes and, at least in some kitchens, perfumed sweets with musk, ambergris and rose.