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Lemon Cake
1 cupful butter, 2 cupfuls sugar, 7 eggs, 1 1/2 pints flour, 1 teaspoonful baking-powder, 1 teaspoonful extract lemon. Rub to a light cream the butter and sugar; add the eggs, two at a time, beating five minutes after each addition; add the flour sifted with the powder, and the extract; mix into a medium batter; bake in paper-lined tin, in a moderate oven, forty minutes.
A rich butter-and-egg pound cake, leaned slightly toward a modern batter by the single teaspoon of baking powder. The whole structure comes from air beaten into the butter, sugar and eggs, so the long beating times are the instruction that matters.
- Beat as long as it saysFive minutes after each addition of eggs is not padding: with seven eggs and only a teaspoon of baking powder, the aeration is the leavening. A stand mixer on medium handles this comfortably; total mixing time runs to fifteen or twenty minutes.
- 1 1/2 pints flourFlour was measured by volume in a pint measure, so this is 3 cups, roughly 12 to 13 oz of all-purpose flour. Spoon it into the cup and level rather than scooping, or the cake turns dry.
- 1 cupful butterHalf a pound, 8 oz, two American sticks. It should be soft enough to cream but not oily.
- Seven eggs, two at a timeThree pairs and a single at the end. Use large eggs, at room temperature, or the creamed butter will seize and curdle.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350F; period sources put a moderate oven anywhere from about 325F to 375F. Forty minutes suits a shallow pan; a deep 9-inch round or a tube pan will likely want longer. Test with a skewer at the center.
- Paper-lined tinButter the pan, then line the bottom and sides with parchment. This batter is heavy in sugar and butter and will stick and over-brown at the edges otherwise.
- Lemon extractA teaspoon of bottled extract is the flavoring the recipe calls for, and such extracts were widely used at the time. Grated zest of one to two lemons, rubbed into the sugar before creaming, gives a fresher result if you prefer it.
- YieldAbout 3 lb of batter, enough for one deep 9- or 10-inch cake or two 9x5 loaves. It keeps well wrapped for several days and slices more cleanly on the second day.
This is a pound cake in all but name: the older English formula of a pound each of butter, sugar, eggs and flour, here with the butter reduced and the batter loosened with a teaspoon of baking powder. American cookbooks of the late nineteenth century printed many such cakes distinguished chiefly by flavoring -- lemon, almond, rose, caraway -- at a time when bottled flavoring extracts were widely available. The instruction to beat five minutes after each pair of eggs reflects the demands of hand-beating with a spoon or whisk, when beaten-in air did most of the lifting in so heavy a batter, and such directions persisted in print after chemical leaveners came into use.