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Sponge Cake (One cup of sugar and yolks)
One cup of sugar and yolks of four eggs beaten together; three tablespoons of cold water; put in teacup one and one-half tablespoons of cornstarch and one and one-half teaspoons baking powder, fill cup with pastry flour, flavor with lemon (juice of lemon preferred) and lastly put in stiffly-beaten white of eggs. Bake about twenty-five or thirty minutes.
A short, thrifty sponge that leans on baking powder rather than on air alone. The only real difficulty is the measuring: the flour is given as "fill cup," which means the cornstarch and baking powder go into the cup first and flour is added to the one-cup line.
- The flour measurementPut 1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch and 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder in a one-cup measure, then top up with pastry flour to the brim — total dry volume is one cup, not one cup plus additions. The cornstarch and baking powder come to about 2 tablespoons, so that leaves roughly 7/8 cup of flour.
- Teacup vs. cupA nineteenth-century teacup is often reckoned at roughly 3/4 of a modern cup, though the usage varied. Here the same vessel seems to be used as the general measure alongside the cup of sugar, so a standard 8-oz measuring cup is the safer choice.
- Pastry flourPastry flour is lower in protein than all-purpose. If you have none, use all-purpose and the cornstarch already in the recipe will soften it; do not add more.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A sponge of this size wants 350F; 25 to 30 minutes matches that heat well.
- PanAlso unstated. This is a small batter — an 8-inch round or square, or a small tube pan, gives the right depth for the stated time. Spread in a 9x13 it would be very thin and would bake much faster, and risks drying out.
- Folding the whitesThe whites go in last and supply most of the lift beyond the baking powder. Fold in thirds with a spatula until just combined; stirring them into a stiff yolk batter deflates them and you get a flat, rubbery layer at the bottom.
- LemonThe juice of a whole lemon is about 3 tablespoons, which will thin the batter noticeably given there are already 3 tablespoons of water. Use half a lemon, or add the zest with a tablespoon of juice for more flavor and less liquid.
- Doneness and yieldThe top should spring back and a skewer come out clean. Makes one small single-layer cake, eight modest slices; it is best the day it is baked.
Sponge cake in American home cookbooks splits into two families: the true sponge, raised entirely by beaten eggs, and the quicker chemically leavened version that spread after commercial baking powder became a pantry staple in the later nineteenth century. This is the second kind, and the cornstarch is the tell, used for lowering the strength of wheat flour before boxed cake flour was widely sold. The recipe may also reflect a practical economy of the era's kitchens: sponge cakes are said to have sometimes been written in matched pairs, one using yolks and one using whites, so that a cook with leftover whites from custard or leftover yolks from meringue had somewhere to put them. Measurements arrive as "put in teacup" rather than in standardized weights.