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White Cake
Beat one pound of fresh butter to cream. Work in gradually one pound of powdered white sugar, one pound of dried flour, a dessert-spoonful each of candied orange-and lemon-peel chopped small, an ounce of caraway-seeds, half a nutmeg, grated, a quarter of a pint of cream, five well-beaten eggs, a small glassful of brandy, and a little orange-flower or rose-water. Beat the cake well between every addition. Mix with it a table-spoonful of fresh yeast, cover with a cloth, and put it on the hearth to rise. When sufficiently risen, put it into a well-buttered tin, and bake in a well-heated oven. As soon as the cake is done enough, brush it over with the beaten white of an egg, sprinkle powdered white sugar over it, and put it in a cool oven for a short time till the glazing is hard. Time to let the cake rise, about half an hour. Probable cost, exclusive of the brandy, 3s. 4d.
WHITE CAKE (another way; sometimes called one two, three, four cake). Take a cupful of butter, two cupfuls of sugar, three cupfuls of flour, and four eggs. Beat the butter to cream, and add the sugar, the flour, and lastly the eggs. Flavour the mixture with grated nutmeg or lemon-rind. Dredge flour upon the table, and roll out the paste to the thickness of the third of an inch. Put the cake on a baking-sheet, prick it lightly with a fork, and put it in a well-heated oven. Time to bake the cake, about a quarter of an hour.
Two quite different cakes share one heading here: a yeast-raised pound cake in the older English manner, and a plain creamed batter of the American "one two three four" type, rolled thin and baked like a biscuit. The first is the interesting one, and the yeast is where it goes wrong for modern cooks.
- The yeast is the hingeA tablespoonful of fresh yeast in a batter this heavy with butter, sugar and eggs will not do much in half an hour on a warm hearth. Rich doughs ferment slowly, and the half-hour the recipe allows looks optimistic; let it rise in a warm place until visibly puffed and domed, however long that takes. Fresh yeast is commonly sold in 42g blocks — a tablespoonful is roughly 15g, or about 7g of instant dried.
- "Dried flour"Flour was warmed and dried before the fire to drive off damp before being weighed. Ordinary plain flour straight from the packet needs nothing done to it.
- MeasuresA dessert-spoonful is 2 teaspoons. A quarter of a pint of cream is 5 fl oz (150 ml) in imperial measure. A "small glassful" of brandy is not fixed — read it as 2 to 3 tablespoons; a wine glass in this period ran to about 2 fl oz.
- Oven heatThe book gives only "well-heated" and "cool". For a large rich cake read the first as moderate, somewhere around 325-350F (160-175C) and no fiercer, or the outside sets long before the centre. The "cool oven" for hardening the glaze would be low, roughly 225-250F (110-120C), and only for a short time as the recipe says.
- Size and timingA pound each of butter, sugar and flour with five eggs makes a very large cake — a deep 9 or 10 inch tin, and 1½ to 2 hours in the oven. The original gives no baking time at all, so test with a skewer rather than the clock.
- Caraway and flower watersAn ounce of caraway seed is around 4 tablespoons, assertive by modern taste; half that reads as flavouring rather than seed cake. Orange-flower and rose water vary enormously in strength between brands — start with a teaspoon.
- The second cake is not a cake as we use the wordOne cup butter, two sugar, three flour, four eggs, with no liquid and no leavening, rolled a third of an inch thick and pricked, produces a large flat sweet biscuit. Chill the paste before rolling or it will be unmanageable, and bake at about 375F (190C) for the quarter hour given.
- Cost3s 4d in the currency of the day, exclusive of the brandy — a reminder that a pound each of butter and sugar made this a cake for a household with money.
Before chemical leavening became reliable, the grand English cakes were raised with ale barm or baker's yeast, which is why this recipe reads more like an enriched bread dough than a batter: butter, sugar, dried fruit peel, caraway, brandy and a flower water, worked and beaten and set by the hearth to rise. Caraway seeds in cake are an old English habit, the basis of the seed cake that was still a standard tea-table item in the nineteenth century; the candied peel and rose water look back further still, to the spiced enriched breads of the seventeenth century. The second version is a different tradition entirely " the "one two three four" cake, a mnemonic formula generally traced to American household cookery of the early to mid nineteenth century, valued because it could be remembered without a book. Cassell's, compiled in the 1870s for a broad middle-class readership, routinely gathers such variants under a single name and lets the cook choose, which is why a heavy yeasted celebration cake and a rolled biscuit sit here under one heading.