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Lemon Cake
Take one cup butter and rub to a cream; two cups sugar; rub butter and sugar together, four eggs beaten to a froth, add the grated rind of a lemon, two cups of flour, one cup of milk with onehalf teaspoon of soda dissolved in it; add the juice of the lemon and one cup of flour.
— Miss Charlotte T. Dubois
A creamed-butter cake of the old proportional type: one cup butter, two cups sugar, three cups flour in two additions, one cup milk. No pan, oven or time is given, which was normal in a subscription cookbook where every reader already had a cake in her head.
- The hinge: get it into the oven fastThe soda is dissolved in the milk and the lemon juice goes in near the end, so the leavening reaction starts at the bowl rather than in the oven. Have the pan greased and the oven at temperature before you begin, and bake as soon as the last cup of flour is folded in.
- Flour is three cups totalTwo cups go in with the milk, one more after the lemon juice. Read straight through, the recipe can look like it calls for two; it does not. Use plain all-purpose flour, spooned into the cup and levelled — a nineteenth-century cup of flour was a light one.
- Soda without much acidHalf a teaspoon of soda for three cups of flour is modest, and the only acid is the milk and lemon juice. If your milk is fresh rather than slightly soured, expect a close, fine crumb rather than a light one. Buttermilk in place of the sweet milk will give more lift.
- "Rub to a cream"This means cream the butter alone until soft and smooth, then work in the sugar — the same as modern creaming, done by hand with a wooden spoon against the side of a bowl. Butter at about 65F, and beat until visibly pale and aerated; much of the rise comes from this and from the beaten eggs.
- Eggs "beaten to a froth"Whole eggs whipped until foamy and lightened, not separated. Add them to the creamed butter in three or four additions so the batter does not break.
- Oven and panNo oven or timing is given; 350F works. The batter fills a 10-inch tube pan or two 9-inch rounds; a tube pan takes roughly 50 to 60 minutes, layers 25 to 30. Test with a skewer in the thickest part.
- LemonOne lemon supplies both rind and juice — about a tablespoon of zest and two to three tablespoons of juice from a modern supermarket lemon. Grate the rind before juicing, and take only the yellow.
- YieldA large plain cake, twelve to sixteen slices. The recipe says nothing about finishing it; it takes well to being served plain or with a simple lemon glaze of juice and powdered sugar.
The heading signals exactly what this is: a recipe contributed by name to a local subscription cookbook, the sort compiled by community groups, sold to raise money and printed with the donor's name attached as both credit and guarantee. The instructions assume a cook who knows her own stove, which is why no temperature or time appears. Lemon does double duty here, giving both zest and acid, the latter working with the soda. The soda is dissolved in milk rather than replaced by commercial baking powder, though that choice will not by itself date the receipt: soured-milk-and-soda leavening remained in common domestic use long after baking powder was widely available.