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Lemon Jelly Cake
— Mrs. E. G. Beach
One cup of sugar, one-half cup butter, two-thirds cup of cold water, one egg, two cups of flour, two teaspoons of baking powder. Jelly-The grated rind and juice of one lemon, one cup of sugar; beat thoroughly and boil in double boiler till cooked; spread when cold, and frost with confectioner's sugar.
MRS. D. M. PosT.
A plain one-egg butter cake in layers with a boiled lemon filling — the sort of cake a village cookbook assumes you already know how to assemble. Two things need attention: the pans, which are never mentioned, and the filling, which as printed has nothing in it to set.
- The filling will not thicken as writtenGrated rind, juice and a cup of sugar cooked over water gives you hot lemon syrup, not jelly. Comparable period lemon fillings usually contain a beaten egg, sometimes with a spoonful of flour or cornstarch, and the instruction to "beat thoroughly" suggests something has dropped out here. Add an egg (or an egg and a teaspoon of cornstarch) and cook over simmering water, stirring, until it coats the spoon and mounds slightly.
- Do not let the filling boil hardDespite the instruction to "boil," a double boiler is used precisely so the egg mixture stays below a full boil. Once it curdles it cannot be smoothed out. Pull it at the first sign of thickening and cool completely before spreading, or it will soak the layers.
- Pans and ovenNeither is given. This quantity will make two 8-inch round layers, or three thin ones if you prefer more filling; bake at about 350F, roughly 20 to 25 minutes for two layers, 15 to 18 for three.
- Water, not milkCold water in place of milk turns up in other cakes of the period. It tends to give a lighter, slightly leaner crumb that carries a tart filling well; milk would give a somewhat richer, closer crumb.
- Baking powderTwo teaspoons to two cups of flour is right by modern measure as well, but turn-of-the-century baking powder was often single-acting. Get the batter into the oven promptly.
- Butter and sugarHalf a cup of butter is one stick, 4 oz. Cream it with the sugar until genuinely pale and light — with only one egg, the aeration from creaming is doing most of the work.
- "Frost with confectioner's sugar"This means a simple water or lemon-juice icing: roughly 1 to 1 1/4 cups sifted confectioners' sugar with lemon juice or water added a teaspoon at a time until it pours thickly. Not a buttercream.
- YieldServes eight to ten. It keeps a day under a cover, though the egg-thickened filling means it belongs in the refrigerator after that.
- Two namesThe recipe carries Mrs. E. G. Beach's name at the head and Mrs. D. M. Post's at the foot. In books of this kind the credit usually follows the receipt, so the name at the head may well belong to whatever came before it on the page. Which lady owned the cake is anyone's guess.
Lemon jelly cake was a fixture of American church and village cookbooks from the 1870s onward, and the "jelly" in the name means only the filling between the layers — the older sense of jelly cake, which covers anything from currant jam to a cooked lemon curd. Cheap chemical leavening helped: baking powder made a dependable layer cake possible in a home kitchen without hours of beating, and through the later nineteenth century lemons arrived in quantity from Sicily and, later, California, so a fruit that had been a small luxury became something a housewife could buy singly at the village grocer. The measurements are all in cups and the oven instructions absent altogether — everyone reading it was assumed to know her own stove.