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Butter Sponge Cake
One cup of sugar, one-half cup of milk, one and one-half cups of flour, two eggs, one tablespoon of butter, two teaspoons of baking powder.
This makes a very nice layer cake.
— Mrs. Frances Pepper
A community-cookbook shorthand: the ingredients and nothing else, on the assumption that any woman reading it already knew how a layer cake was put together. The proportions are sound, but everything about method, pan and oven has to be supplied.
- The method the recipe assumesCream the butter with the sugar, beat in the eggs, then add the flour sifted with the baking powder alternately with the milk. With only one tablespoon of butter the creaming is token; some cooks of the period beat the eggs and sugar together sponge-fashion and stirred in melted butter last, which suits the name better.
- Cups and spoonsBy 1900 an American cup was a half-pint, 8 fluid ounces, and a tablespoon was close to today's. A cup of flour may be anywhere from about 4 ounces sifted to about 5 ounces scooped and levelled, depending on how it was handled; measure by weight if you want the batter to behave.
- Baking powderTwo teaspoons for a cup and a half of flour is a little more than the modern rule of about a teaspoon per cup. Period powders were single-acting and lost strength on the shelf; with fresh double-acting powder, a scant one and a half teaspoons gives a better crumb and less aftertaste.
- OvenNo temperature is given because the book assumes a wood or coal range judged by hand. Bake at 350F.
- Pan and timeThis is a small batter. It will fill two 8-inch layer pans thinly, and they will be done in 18 to 22 minutes; one 8-inch pan gives a single deeper cake needing about 30 minutes. The recipe itself does not say how many layers were intended.
- FlavouringNone is listed, as in many contributed recipes of the period, where it was left to the cook. A teaspoon of vanilla, or the grated rind of half a lemon, keeps the cake from tasting flat.
- Yield and fillingTwo thin layers serving about eight. No filling is specified; jelly, boiled frosting and cornstarch-thickened custard were all common choices in cookbooks of the period.
The name marks a hybrid. A true sponge cake is leavened by beaten eggs alone and contains no butter; a butter cake carries a half-cup or more and depends on creaming for its lift. "Butter sponge" sits between the two — egg and chemical leavening doing most of the work, with a single tablespoon of butter for flavour and keeping quality. Cakes of this shape appear to have spread through American home kitchens after commercial baking powder became cheap and reliable in the second half of the nineteenth century, since they no longer required the long arm-work of a genuine sponge.