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Fudge Cake
1¾ cups Five Roses flour 1½ cups sugar ½ cup butter ½ cup sweet milk 2 eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla 2 ounces grated chocolate 9½ teaspoons cream of tartar 1 teaspoon soda (dissolved) Just before adding the soda, add to ingredients ¾ cup boiling water. Bake in 2 layers.
A plain creamed-butter layer cake with melted chocolate, from the era when "fudge cake" meant a cake tasting of fudge rather than a dense flourless bake. One quantity in the printed text is almost certainly a misprint and needs judgement before you start.
- The cream of tartar figure"9½ teaspoons cream of tartar" cannot be right for 1¾ cups of flour; that is on the order of an ounce of acid and the cake would be sour and coarse. The intended amount cannot be recovered with certainty, but it was plainly a small fraction of the printed figure. Treat the number as a typesetting error rather than a conversion problem.
- Acid and soda togetherCream of tartar plus soda is the period substitute for baking powder. If you would rather not measure them separately, 2 teaspoons of baking powder in place of both is a reasonable substitute with modern flour.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh unsoured milk, as distinct from the buttermilk or clabbered milk also common in these books. Whole milk is the closest match.
- Grated chocolateTwo ounces of unsweetened baking chocolate, grated so it will disperse. The boiling water added at the end is what actually melts and blooms it, so grate finely rather than chopping in chunks.
- Order of workThe instructions assume you know the creaming method: butter and sugar together, then eggs, then flour alternately with milk, then chocolate and vanilla. The boiling water goes in next and the dissolved soda absolutely last, so the cake goes into the oven while it is still reacting.
- Oven and tinsThe recipe gives no oven or tin guidance beyond "bake in 2 layers"; two 8-inch round tins, greased and floured, at 350F for 25 to 30 minutes is a reasonable modern reading, baking until a skewer comes out clean and the edges pull from the tin. The batter will be thin from the boiling water; that is expected.
- FinishingNo filling or icing is given. A boiled fudge or chocolate butter icing between and over the layers is in keeping. Serves 10 to 12.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company and given away or sold cheaply to Canadian households who bought Five Roses flour, with recipes contributed by housewives across the country — which is why the measurements are inconsistent and the instructions assume a cook already knows what she is doing. Fudge as a confection spread rapidly through North American women's colleges in the 1890s, and cakes borrowing the name followed, generally meaning a butter cake enriched with melted unsweetened chocolate rather than the fudgy flourless style the phrase suggests now. The trick of slackening the batter with boiling water, common in chocolate cakes of this period, both dissolves the grated chocolate and produces a finer crumb; it survives in the "hot water" and "boiling water" chocolate cakes still made today.