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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 \ or 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.