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White Mountain Cake
One cup of sugar, one-half cup of butter, one-half cup of milk, whites of four eggs, one and one-half cups of flour, two teaspoons of baking powder.
— Mrs. Mima Hill
A village cake receipt of the terse sort: ingredients only, no method, no pan, no oven. The proportions are a standard silver cake, and the assumptions the writer left out are the whole job.
- Method the receipt omitsCream the butter and sugar, add the milk and flour alternately with the baking powder sifted in, then fold in the whites beaten to soft peaks last. Folding rather than beating the whites in helps keep the crumb light, though period receipts of this kind often simply beat them in.
- OvenNothing is stated, so use 350F. A cake of this size wants a moderate oven; anything above 375F sets the crust before the center rises.
- Pan and timeThe batter fills one 8-inch round or a small loaf pan, roughly 25 to 30 minutes. Two thin layers in 8-inch pans take 18 to 22 minutes.
- FlourHousehold flour of the period varied a good deal, and some of it was softer than modern all-purpose. Cake flour may give a closer match; if using all-purpose, measure 1 1/2 cups by spooning it in and leveling, not by scooping, or the cake will be dry.
- Butter and saltHalf a cup is one stick. Butter of the period was often salted, and no salt is listed — with unsalted butter add a scant 1/4 teaspoon.
- Baking powderTwo teaspoons to 1 1/2 cups flour works out slightly above modern norms of about a teaspoon per cup, but it suits soft flour and four whites. Modern double-acting powder is stronger than some period brands; 1 1/2 teaspoons is safer against a metallic aftertaste.
- The four yolksThe receipt says nothing of them; in a household kitchen they would likely have been used the same day, in a gold cake, a custard, or a dressing. Refrigerate them under a little water if not used at once.
- FrostingThe receipt names none, though a white boiled icing or plain white frosting is the usual finish for a cake of this name, and would have been common knowledge. Undressed, it is a plain white layer.
- YieldEight to ten small slices from a single layer.
White Mountain cake belongs to the family of white or "silver" cakes that spread through American community cookbooks after commercial baking powder and cheap refined sugar made them practical in an ordinary kitchen. The whiteness is the point: whites only, white sugar, white flour, and a white boiled frosting, all of it a quiet display of ingredients that had recently stopped being luxuries. The name is generally taken as a reference to the snow-covered New Hampshire range, and related cakes appear elsewhere as snow cake, silver cake, or lady cake, though these are not simply one cake under several names — lady cake, for instance, conventionally carries almond and its own proportions. Its form here — a bare list of proportions signed with a neighbor's name — is typical of village receipt sections, where the method was common knowledge and only the ratios were worth writing down.