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Mrs. Rorer's Chocolate Cake
2 ounces of chocolate, 4 eggs, 1/2 a cup of milk, 1 teaspoonful of vanilla, 1/2 a cup of butter, 1 1/2 cups of sugar, 1 3/4 cups of flour, 1 heaping teaspoonful of baking powder.
Dissolve the chocolate in five tablespoonfuls of boiling water. Cream butter and add sugar gradually, add the yolks, beat again, then the milk, then the melted chocolate and flour. Give the whole a vigorous beating. Now beat the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth, and stir them carefully into the mixture; add the vanilla and baking powder. Mix quickly and lightly, turn into well-greased cake pan and bake in a moderate oven forty-five minutes.--From Mrs. Rorer's Cook Book.
A creamed butter cake carrying two ounces of unsweetened chocolate loosened with boiling water. The order of operations at the end is unusual and worth reading twice before you start.
- Dissolve the chocolate, do not melt itFive tablespoonfuls of boiling water poured onto chopped or grated unsweetened chocolate gives a smooth, pourable paste. That water is part of the recipe's liquid balance, so melting the chocolate dry over hot water instead will give you a stiffer batter than intended.
- Separate the eggs -- the recipe never tells you toThe ingredient list says "4 eggs" and the method then asks for the yolks early and the whites, beaten to a stiff froth, near the end. Separate all four before you begin.
- "A moderate oven"350F for the chocolate cake. Forty-five minutes suits a single deep 8- or 9-inch pan; in two shallow layers start checking at 25 minutes.
- Baking powder lastMrs. Rorer adds the baking powder at the very end rather than sifting it with the flour. It works, but it must be distributed fast and the pan must go straight into a preheated oven.
- Work fast at the finishThe whites, the vanilla and the baking powder all go in after the batter is otherwise complete. "Mix quickly and lightly" is carrying real weight: fold, do not beat, and get the pan into an oven that is already at temperature.
- This printing repairs a fault in the 1912 textThe 1912 printing of this recipe reads "Beat the butter to a cream, add the yolks" -- and never tells you when the sugar goes in, although a cup and a quarter of it sits in the ingredient list. Our printing corrects the method to "Cream butter and add sugar gradually" and raises the sugar to a cup and a half. If you have seen the earlier version, this is the one to follow.
- The panOne well-greased deep tin, eight or nine inches, for the full forty-five minutes. Line the base as well as greasing it; a batter this rich with chocolate catches.
The credit reads "From Mrs. Rorer's Cook Book", which means Walter Baker reprinted this rather than commissioning it, and the name was worth reprinting. Sarah Tyson Rorer (1849-1937) founded the Philadelphia Cooking School, was domestic editor of the Ladies' Home Journal and a contributing editor at Good Housekeeping, lectured and gave cooking demonstrations across the country, and is often described as the first American dietitian. For a food manufacturer around 1900 her endorsement was about as valuable as an endorsement could be, which is why a booklet selling Premium No. 1 Chocolate opens its contributed section with her. The cake is of its moment too: a creamed butter cake raised with baking powder rather than beaten eggs alone, which is what chemical leavening had made ordinary by the time she was teaching.