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Sponge Cake (Two cups of sugar one cup)
Two cups of sugar, one cup of milk, two eggs, three cups of flour, two tablespoons of butter, three teaspoons of baking powder.
— Mrs. Philip H. Cole
A village receipt of the barest sort: a list of proportions with no method, no pan and no oven. The proportions are sound, and the rest was assumed knowledge in the contributor's kitchen.
- It is not a sponge cakeA true sponge relies on beaten eggs for lift and contains no butter or chemical leavening. This is a plain butter or "cup" cake, and it should be treated as one: cream the butter and sugar, beat in the eggs, then add the flour sifted with the baking powder alternately with the milk.
- Two tablespoons of butter is not muchWith three cups of flour this is a lean, dry-crumbed cake by modern expectations, closer to a tea cake than a layer cake. That is what the receipt intends; do not read the small quantity as an error.
- OvenNo oven is named. A cake of this type is usually baked in a moderate oven, about 350F. The receipt gives no temperature at all, which is typical of proportion-only entries.
- Pan and timeThe batter will make two 8-inch rounds, or a shallower sheet in a 9x13. Reckon roughly 25-30 minutes for rounds and a little longer for a sheet, and test with a straw or skewer in the centre.
- Baking powderThree teaspoons to three cups of flour is the standard ratio and still correct. Period baking powders were often single-acting, so the batter was meant to go into the oven at once; with modern double-acting powder a short delay does no harm.
- EggsEggs of the period were not graded as they are now and may have run smaller than a modern large. Two large eggs give a slightly richer result, which this rather austere formula can carry.
- FlavouringNone is given. A teaspoon of vanilla, or the grated rind of a lemon, is in keeping.
- YieldAbout twelve to sixteen squares, or one two-layer 8-inch cake. It is a cake for a plain frosting or none at all.
Community cookbooks like this one were compiled from receipts that neighbours already knew how to execute, which is why so many entries are nothing but a list of proportions signed with a name. The loose use of "sponge cake" is characteristic of American home cookery, where the term came to cover almost any light, pale, unspiced cake, and butter-and-milk versions leavened with baking powder circulated under the name. Chemical leavening was widely available to American households from the middle of the nineteenth century onward, and its cheapness helped make a cake like this an everyday possibility.