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Crumb Cake
2 cups Five Roses flour 1 cup white sugar ¾ cup butter Rub to crumbs. Take out 1 cup of the crumbs. Mix the rest with: 1 cup sour milk 1 teaspoon soda 1 teaspoon cloves 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1 egg 1 cup raisins 1 cup currants Sprinkle the cup of crumbs on top of cake, then put in oven to bake. 2 cups sugar ¾ cup butter 3 eggs
A streusel-type spice cake built on a single rubbed-crumb mixture, half of which becomes the batter and half the topping. The original gives no pan, no temperature and no time, so those are the gaps to fill.
- The stray last lineThe final "2 cups sugar, ¾ cup butter, 3 eggs" matches nothing in the method above and cannot be placed in any step. It appears to be a stray line, possibly belonging to another recipe on the page. It cannot be used with the instructions as given.
- Rub to crumbsUse cold butter and work it into the flour and sugar with fingertips or a pastry blender until it looks like coarse meal with some pea-sized lumps. If the butter softens and the mixture pastes together, the reserved cup will melt into the surface instead of staying as a crumb layer.
- Sour milkThis means genuinely soured milk, thick and acidic. Buttermilk is the direct substitute, cup for cup; failing that, add a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar to a cup of whole milk and let it stand ten minutes. Ordinary sweet milk will not give the soda anything to react with.
- SodaA level teaspoon of baking soda, not heaped. With only one cup of acidic milk to neutralise, a generous measure leaves a soapy, faintly metallic aftertaste that the cloves will not hide.
- OvenThe recipe gives no temperature. 350F suits it, in a greased 9-inch square pan or a 9x5 loaf; expect roughly 40 to 50 minutes for the square and closer to an hour for the loaf. Test with a skewer through the centre, avoiding the crumb layer.
- CurrantsThese are dried Zante currants, the small black raisin, not fresh red or black currants. Toss both fruits with a spoonful of the flour before mixing so they stay suspended rather than sinking.
- Batter consistencyOne cup of liquid and one egg into roughly two-thirds of a rubbed flour mixture gives a stiff, spoonable batter rather than a pourable one. Spread it level in the pan with the back of a spoon before scattering the crumbs.
- YieldAbout 12 to 16 squares from a 9-inch pan. It keeps well for several days covered, and the spice reads stronger on the second day.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Montreal and Winnipeg and distributed with its flour; the recipes were largely solicited from Canadian housewives, which is why the instructions are so telegraphic and why measurements are given in cups rather than weights. Crumb cakes of this type are often traced to the German Streuselkuchen tradition, and are said to have travelled with German-speaking settlers into Pennsylvania and, later, the Canadian prairies, though the lineage is a general one rather than a documented route. The sour milk and soda are the older leavening system, still ordinary in 1913 farm kitchens where milk soured on its own, even though commercial baking powder was by then widely and cheaply available.