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Delicate Cake (Two cups of sugar one-half cup)
Two cups of sugar, one-half cup of butter, three cups flour, whites of four eggs, one cup cold water, two teaspoons baking powder, one teaspoon vanilla.
— Miss E. Joesbury
A plain white cake in the old ratio style — everything measured in cups, no oven temperature, no pan size and no method beyond the list itself. The order is the instruction: cream the butter and sugar, alternate flour and water, fold in the whipped whites last.
- Method, since none is givenCream the half cup (1 stick, 4 oz) butter with the sugar until pale, sift the flour with the baking powder, and add it alternately with the water. Beat the whites to soft peaks and fold them in at the end — they are the only lift besides the powder, so do not stir them down.
- Cup sizesLate 19th-century American cups were broadly similar to the modern 8 fl oz cup, though standardization was uneven until the end of the century. Three cups of flour comes to somewhere around 13-15 oz if you scoop, nearer 12-13 oz if you spoon and level; err on the lighter side or the cake goes dry.
- FlourHousehold flour of the period varied by region and mill, and some of it was softer than today's all-purpose. Cake flour gives the fine, tender crumb the name "delicate" is promising; if using all-purpose, replace two tablespoons per cup with cornstarch.
- Baking powderTwo teaspoons for three cups of flour is on the low side by modern standards because the beaten whites carry part of the load. Period baking powder was single-acting, so the batter was meant to go into the oven immediately — good practice here regardless.
- OvenA cake of this type wants a moderate oven, 350F. Two 8- or 9-inch round layers take 25-30 minutes; a single tube or loaf pan takes 45-55. Test with a skewer in the center.
- Water, not milkThe cup of cold water will give a paler, leaner crumb than milk would. Receipts of this type vary, though: plenty of "delicate" and "silver" cakes use milk, and it is the whites-only egg that gives them their name.
- Yield and finishingEnough for two 9-inch layers, about 12 servings. Receipts of this kind were commonly finished with a boiled white icing or a simple butter frosting.
- The four leftover yolksYolks left over from a white cake had obvious uses: "gold cake" recipes, custards and salad dressings all call for them.
White cakes built on egg whites alone spread widely once chemical leavening and cheap refined white sugar became common in the mid-19th century; earlier pale, fine-grained cakes meant long hand-beating and costly ingredients. By the 1880s and 90s community cookbooks carried numbers of them under names advertising their colour and texture — delicate cake, silver cake, snow cake, white mountain cake — often alongside a gold or sunshine cake that used the yolks. The attribution to Miss E. Joesbury suggests a compilation gathering contributions from local cooks, the sort of book that assumes its readers already know how to cream butter, fold whites and judge an oven, which is why nothing here is explained.