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Cake Without Eggs
One cup brown sugar, one cup sour milk, half cup molasses, half cup butter, one teaspoon of soda, one-half teaspoon each of all kinds of spices, one cup of fruit and three cups of sifted flour.
— Mrs. Henry Carpenter
A village eggless spice cake of the sort kept in the recipe box for weeks when hens were off lay or eggs were dear. The list gives quantities and nothing else, so method, pan and oven are left to the cook.
- The hinge: acid and sodaWith no eggs, all the lift comes from the soda reacting with the sour milk and molasses. Mix the batter quickly, put it straight into a prepared pan, and into a preheated oven — a batter left standing on the counter will have spent its gas before it sets.
- Sour milkThis means genuinely soured raw milk, thick and clabbered. Buttermilk is the closest modern stand-in, cup for cup; failing that, a cup of whole milk with a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar stirred in and left ten minutes.
- "All kinds of spices"In a nineteenth-century baking cupboard that would mean the usual four or five: cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, allspice and sometimes ginger. Half a teaspoon of each gives a strongly spiced cake, which is the point — the spice and molasses stand in for the richness eggs would have brought.
- "One cup of fruit"Raisins, currants or chopped dried apple, all of which were kept on hand. Toss the fruit with a spoonful of the measured flour before folding it in so it does not sink through the loose batter.
- SaltNone is called for. If you use unsalted butter, add half a teaspoon of salt with the flour.
- Method, since none is givenCream the butter with the brown sugar, beat in the molasses, then add the sour milk alternately with the flour, the soda dissolved in a little of the milk, the spices with the flour, and the fruit last.
- Oven and panNo temperature is specified; 350F suits a molasses batter, which darkens quickly at higher heat. The quantity fills a 9x5-inch loaf pan or an 8-inch square, and takes 45 to 55 minutes — test with a skewer, as the cake stays dark and moist.
- KeepingYields about 10 to 12 slices. Eggless spice cakes of this type improve after a day wrapped in a cloth or in a tin, and the crumb firms up as it rests.
Eggless, milk-soured spice cakes appear all through late nineteenth-century American community cookbooks, and they were practical rather than fashionable: eggs were seasonal and saleable, sour milk was a by-product of any household that kept a cow, and molasses was cheaper than white sugar. Recipes like this are sometimes grouped with the "war cakes" and "poor man's cakes" of the 1910s, though the pattern is plainly older than the First World War — the same combination of brown sugar, molasses, sour milk, soda and dried fruit turns up decades earlier. What dates this version to a particular kitchen is the shorthand: "one-half teaspoon each of all kinds of spices" and "one cup of fruit" assume a reader who already knows which jars stand on the shelf, which is exactly how a receipt contributed by a neighbor to a local subscription cookbook was meant to read.