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Layer Cake
One cup of sugar, butter size of an egg, three eggs beaten separately, one and one-half cups flour, one and one-half teaspoons baking powder, three tablespoons of sweet milk; use large mixing spoon for measuring milk; any flavoring. Always light, and good with any kind of filling.
— Mrs. S. W. Sprague
A plain sponge-style layer cake built on separated eggs and a small amount of butter, written for a cook who already knows how to run a cake. The only real technique here is the beaten whites, which are what makes it "always light."
- The hinge: separated eggsBeat the yolks into the creamed butter and sugar, and fold the stiffly beaten whites in last, after the flour and milk. Stir them in and the cake loses the lift it is relying on, since three tablespoons of milk and a cup and a half of flour give you very little other structure.
- Butter size of an eggA standard old measure for about 2 ounces, or 4 tablespoons. This is a lean cake by modern standards; it will taste more of egg than of butter and will stale within a day.
- "Use large mixing spoon for measuring milk"Mrs. Sprague is telling you her tablespoons are generous ones. Three modern tablespoons is about 45 ml; a household mixing spoon of the period could hold half again as much. Start with 3 tablespoons and add a little more only if the batter will not drop from the spoon.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh milk, as opposed to the soured or buttermilk that appears in soda-leavened receipts. Whole milk is the right substitute.
- FlourMeasure 1 1/2 cups as roughly 6 1/2 ounces of all-purpose flour, spooned and levelled. Much household flour of the period was softer than today's all-purpose, though this varied by region and mill; if you have cake flour, use it for a finer crumb.
- Oven and pansThe receipt gives no oven direction; a moderate oven, around 350F, suits it. The batter fills two 8-inch round pans thinly, or one 8-inch pan for a taller cake; on a modern test the layers want roughly 18 to 22 minutes, the single pan closer to 30.
- Flavoring"Any flavoring" means a teaspoon of vanilla, lemon or almond extract, or a little grated lemon zest. Rose water was still in domestic use in this period and suits the cake well.
- Yield and fillingTwo thin layers, serving eight. Because the crumb is dry-leaning, it takes a moist filling best: a cooked lemon or custard filling, jam with whipped cream, or a boiled white icing.
Layer cake as a household staple is a product of the second half of the nineteenth century, when reliable chemical baking powder and cheap stamped tinware arrived in ordinary kitchens at about the same time. Before that, a cook wanting height relied on eggs and hours of beating; afterwards, two thin tins and a little powder did the work, and the interest shifted from the cake to the filling, which is exactly the attitude in Mrs. Sprague's closing line. Community cookbooks like this one preserved layer cake formulas whose differences were points of local pride: the size of the butter, the number of eggs, whether the whites went in separately. The contributor's name attached to the receipt was part of the point, functioning as a guarantee that the thing worked in a real kitchen down the road.