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Nut Bread (Two eggs one-half cup of sugar)
Two eggs, one-half cup of sugar, two cups of milk, one teaspoon of salt, four cups of flour, four teaspoons of baking powder, one cup of walnuts chopped fine. Let rise one-half hour. Filling for sandwiches-One half of cream cheese, one-half bottle of olives, paprika and almonds; mix with sweet cream or orange marmalade.
— Miss Cora White
A plain baking-powder nut bread of the kind that filled church-supper and tea tables around 1900, printed with no pan, no temperature and no baking time. Everything below fills those gaps.
- No oven givenBake at 350F. Four cups of flour makes a large batter, enough for two loaf pans rather than one; time will depend on pan size, so test with a skewer in the centre.
- "Let rise one-half hour" is a rest, not a riseThere is no yeast here. The half hour lets the baking powder begin working and the flour hydrate, which softens the crumb and reduces tunnelling. Modern double-acting baking powder still has plenty of lift left for the oven, so the instruction works as written.
- Method the original omitsBeat the eggs with the sugar, add the milk, then stir the flour, baking powder and salt in until just combined. Fold in the nuts last. Overmixing a batter this wet gives a tough, rubbery loaf.
- No fat in the batterThere is no butter or oil, as in a number of fatless nut breads of the period. Expect a firm, slightly dry, bread-like crumb rather than a cake; it will likely slice more cleanly the next day, which suits the sandwich filling that follows.
- Grease the pan wellA lean, sugar-light batter sticks. Butter and flour the pan, or line the base with paper.
- WalnutsToast them ten minutes at 350F before chopping. A cup of raw walnuts stirred into a wet batter tastes flat by the time the loaf is baked.
- "One-half bottle of olives"Genuinely ambiguous, as is "one-half of cream cheese". Use drained olives to taste against the cheese, and chop them fine or the sandwiches fall apart.
- "Cream cheese" and the two fillings"Cream cheese" and the filling -- This probably means a packaged spreadable cream cheese, though at this date the term could still be used of a fresh curd cheese. The "sweet cream or orange marmalade" reads most naturally as two alternative binders for the same mixture, or as two different fillings; the text does not settle it.
- YieldA large quantity of batter, enough for two loaves. Cut thin and crustless for tea sandwiches.
Nut bread belongs to the great wave of chemically leavened quick breads that followed the spread of reliable commercial baking powder in the second half of the nineteenth century. Baking powder freed a household from the yeast sponge and its overnight schedule, and cookbooks of the period fill with breads that go from bowl to oven in an afternoon. The pairing here is the giveaway about its purpose: a lean, close-grained loaf and a savoury cream cheese spread, made to be sliced thin for the ladies' luncheon and the afternoon tea table rather than eaten hot with dinner. Olive-and-nut cream cheese was a fashionable sandwich filling of the era, and marmalade the sweet alternative on the same plate. Collections like this one, gathered from named contributors, record what was actually being served.