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Peanut Cake
1/2 cup butter. 3/4 cup milk. 1 cup (small) sugar 1 teaspoon (heaping) baking powder 2 eggs (beaten separately) Flavoring Enough Five Roses flour to make stiff batter.
This is a shorthand entry of the kind that fills the back pages of early flour-company cookbooks: a list of proportions for a cook who already knows how a plain cake is put together. Several things a modern baker expects are simply absent, and it is worth being clear about which ones.
- The peanuts are not in the listThe title is the only mention of them. Peanut cakes of this period variously fold chopped roasted peanuts into the batter or scatter them over the top before baking; nothing in the printed proportions tells you which, or how many, so treat the quantity as your own decision.
- No fat and no liquidAs written the batter is sugar, eggs, baking powder and flour. That will produce something closer to a sponge or a hard cookie dough than a butter cake. Whether butter and milk were assumed from the surrounding pages or dropped in typesetting cannot be recovered from this entry alone.
- "1 cup (small)"Cup measures in books of this vintage were not fully standardised, and "small" suggests something under the modern 8 fl oz; how much under is not recoverable, so err on the low side rather than packing in a full cup.
- "Heaping teaspoon" of baking powderA heaping spoon is appreciably more than a level modern teaspoon, and powders of this period were single-acting rather than the double-acting kind now sold, so a literal transcription risks over-leavening. A level teaspoon and a half is a reasonable starting point.
- Five Roses flourA Canadian hard-wheat white flour, higher in protein than most American all-purpose flour of the day. Modern unbleached all-purpose is the nearest match; bread flour will make the crumb tough in a cake this lean.
- Eggs beaten separatelyThe whites are whipped and folded in last. With no butter in the formula they are doing all the lifting alongside the baking powder, so fold rather than stir and get the pan into the oven promptly.
- "Stiff batter"The flour quantity is left to the cook, which was normal when flour moisture varied by sack and season. Aim for a batter that mounds on the spoon and falls reluctantly, not one you could roll.
- Oven and timingThe original gives no guidance at all. For a modern oven, 350F is a reasonable choice; check a single 8-inch layer or small loaf from about 25 minutes and test with a skewer.
- YieldTwo eggs and under a cup of sugar makes one small layer or a modest loaf, enough for six to eight slices.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company to sell its flour, and much of it was assembled from recipes sent in by Canadian housewives, which explains entries like this one: a proportions list rather than a method, perfectly clear to the woman who mailed it in and to her neighbours. Peanuts moved from novelty to pantry staple across North America in the decades on either side of 1900, as southern peanut acreage expanded and roasted nuts became cheap and widely sold, and cooks began folding them into the plain cakes, cookies and candies they already knew. Cake recipes of this vintage routinely left out the oven temperature because there was nothing on a wood or coal range to set; heat was judged by hand, by flour scorched on the oven floor, or by how long a scrap of paper took to brown.
Icing (Pulverized sugar and milk)
Pulverized sugar and milk, enough to moisten 10 cents worth of peanuts. Butter size of a hickory nut chopped.fine. Flavoring. Bake cake in a shallow tin. When done, cut in small triangles. Take each piece and cover all over, except bottom, with icing. Then sprinkle with the peanuts and set away to harden.