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Victoria Cake
Put a pound and a quarter of fresh butter into a bowl, and beat it to cream. Add six ounces of powdered sugar, six ounces of pounded sweet almonds, with two or three bitter ones, half an ounce of cinnamon-powder, half a pound of dried cherries, a quarter of a pound of candied peel finely shredded, a pound and a quarter of flour, a little salt, and four eggs. Beat the mixture quickly for a few minutes; then add gradually, beating the batter all the time, three-quarters of a pound of flour, eight eggs well beaten, and a large wine-glassful of brandy. Dissolve an ounce and a half of fresh German yeast in a spoonful of lukewarm water; make a hollow in the centre of the batter, pour in the yeast, and knead it thoroughly into the cake. Whip half a pint of cream to froth, and add this to the rest. Line a baking-tin with buttered paper, half fill it with the mixture, cover with a cloth, and set it in a warm place till it has risen to double the size, then bake immediately in a moderately-heated oven. When the cake is lightly browned, and when a skewer pushed into it will come out clean and dry, it is done enough. If liked, this cake may be served as a pudding, with custard sauce. Probable cost, 6s.
This is a yeast-raised enriched cake of the German Gugelhupf family, scaled for a Victorian household. It cannot be made as printed because of one ingredient.
- The bitter almondsBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the nut is crushed and wetted — exactly what pounding them into a moist batter does. They are not sold as food in the United States and are restricted in some other countries for this reason. Baking drives off some of the liberated cyanide, but it cannot be relied on to remove all of it from the middle of a cake this dense.
- Why the dose is not reassuringVictorian cookery treated two or three bitter almonds as a flavouring, and in a cake of this size the amount per slice is small. But the toxin load of individual bitter almonds varies widely, the recipe gives no weight, and there is no way to judge it in the kitchen. A modern recipe using almond extract should be used instead.
- The quantity is enormousTwo pounds of flour, a pound and a quarter of butter, twelve eggs and half a pint of cream add up to something on the order of seven pounds of raw mixture — a household bake for a large family or a party, not a tin loaf. The 6s. cost puts it well above an everyday cake in the period.
- German yeast"Fresh German yeast" is compressed baker's yeast, sold in cakes; an ounce and a half to two pounds of flour is a generous quantity for a batter weighed down with butter, fruit and brandy. Brewer's yeast, the older alternative, had a reputation for bitterness and unreliability, and compressed yeast was often named specifically in recipes of this period.
- Kneading yeast into a finished batterThe method is unusual: the yeast goes into a hollow in an already-complete rich batter, and the whipped cream follows. Fat and alcohol both slow fermentation, which is presumably why the batter is set in a warm place and proved "to double the size" before baking.
- "Moderately-heated oven"The book gives no temperatures; a moderate oven is conventionally read today as somewhere around 350F. A cake of this bulk would have taken a long bake, judged entirely by the light browning and the clean skewer.
Cassell's belonged to the wave of large Victorian household dictionaries that gathered English, French and German baking under one alphabet, and this "Victoria Cake" is plainly Continental in construction — a yeast-leavened, almond-scented, brandy-soaked butter cake of the kind found across German and Austrian baking, rather than the creamed sponge that later took the Queen's name in the form of the Victoria sandwich. Dozens of dishes were christened after Victoria during her reign, often by cooks and confectioners with no royal connection whatever, so the label need not point to any particular kitchen at Windsor. The reliance on compressed "German yeast" is itself a period marker: cheap, dependable pressed yeast reached British grocers in quantity in the second half of the nineteenth century, and recipes like this one, which asks a heavy enriched batter to double in bulk, only became practical once it did. The suggestion that the cake may be "served as a pudding, with custard sauce" reflects the era's easy traffic between the tea table and the dinner table.