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Brattleboro Cake
One-half pound of butter, one pound of sugar, one pound of flour, three eggs, one tumbler of milk, one teaspoon of cream of tartar, one cup of raisins, one-half cup of chopped citron, nutmeg, wine or brandy.
— Miss Emily Cole
A plain village pound-cake in the older style: weights rather than cups, no oven temperature, no baking time, and an ingredient list that assumes the cook already knows how such a cake behaves. A few things need filling in before it will work.
- The missing sodaCream of tartar is an acid and does nothing on its own. Receipts of this period took it for granted that it would be paired with saleratus (baking soda), usually half as much — so about half a teaspoon of soda to the one teaspoon of cream of tartar. Without it the cake will be dense and slightly sour. A modern alternative is to drop both and use two teaspoons of baking powder.
- Weights to cupsHalf a pound of butter is two sticks (225 g). A pound of sugar is about 2¼ cups; a pound of flour is roughly 3½ to 4 cups, and here it is safer to weigh it than to scoop, since the batter is already on the stiff side.
- A tumblerA drinking tumbler of the period held about 8 fl oz, so read it as one cup of milk. Some households used a smaller 6 oz glass; if the batter looks too tight to drop from the spoon, add milk by the tablespoon.
- Nutmeg, wine or brandyNo quantities are given because these were to taste. A whole grated nutmeg would be a great deal for a cake this size — half a teaspoon freshly grated is plenty — and two to three tablespoons of sherry, Madeira or brandy suits it. The spirit also helps the cake keep.
- CitronCandied citron peel, not the fresh fruit and not lemon peel. It is still sold at holiday baking time; candied orange peel is the nearest substitute, though sweeter and less resinous. Toss the fruit in a spoonful of the measured flour so it does not sink.
- Oven and tinThe receipt gives no oven temperature or baking time; bake at about 350°F. This makes a large cake — bake it in two loaf tins or one 10-inch tube pan, 55 to 70 minutes for loaves and up to 1¼ hours for a tube, until a skewer comes out clean. Cover the top with foil if it colours before the centre sets.
- Method the receipt leaves outCream the butter and sugar thoroughly, beat in the eggs one at a time, then add the flour (sifted with the cream of tartar) alternately with the milk. The long creaming is what lifts a cake with only three eggs to a pound of flour.
- YieldAbout 4 lb of batter — two generous loaves, 20 to 24 slices. It keeps well wrapped for a week and improves after a day.
Cakes named for a town were a common way of crediting the household or region a receipt travelled from. The formula itself is a lightened pound cake: the old one-pound-each rule for butter, sugar, flour and eggs, cut back on butter and eggs and stretched with milk and a chemical leavening, which is how American home baking changed through the middle of the nineteenth century as cream of tartar and saleratus became cheap and reliable. The raisins, citron, nutmeg and spoonful of wine mark it as a keeping cake for company rather than everyday eating.