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Lemon Patty Cakes
Beat well the yolks of 3 eggs. Add 1 cup white sugar and beat again. Add 1 tablespoon lemon juice and 1 tablespoon cold water, 1 cup Five Roses flour, into which 1½ teaspoons baking powder have been sifted, and the whites of the 3 eggs which have been well beaten. Beat all briskly, and bake in patty pans.
A lean, butterless sponge batter baked in small tins. The original assumes you know both the pan and the oven, so both need filling in.
- Patty pansSmall shallow tins of roughly 2 to 2½ inches across, the kind also used for jam tarts. A standard 12-cup muffin tin works, filled about half full, or use mini muffin tins for something closer to the original size.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A batter this light and sugary wants a moderate oven, 350F. Small cakes will be done in 12 to 18 minutes, when the tops spring back and a tester comes out clean.
- The hinge: fold, do not beat"Beat all briskly" is the one instruction to disobey. The whipped whites are the only leavening of consequence beyond the baking powder, and there is no fat to hold air. Fold them in with a spatula in two or three additions or the cakes bake flat and tough.
- Five Roses flourA Canadian hard-wheat all-purpose flour from the mill that published the book. Ordinary all-purpose flour substitutes directly; for a finer crumb, replace two tablespoons of the cup with cornstarch.
- Baking powder strengthBaking powders of this period were typically single-acting, releasing their gas on contact with liquid rather than in the oven, so the timing of the rise differs from a modern powder more than the total lift does. With modern double-acting powder, 1 teaspoon per cup of flour is generally enough, and the full 1½ may leave a faint edge in a cake this plain.
- Grease the tins wellWith no butter or oil in the batter, these stick badly. Butter the tins and dust with flour, or use paper liners, and turn the cakes out while still warm.
- Yield and servingAbout 12 muffin-sized cakes or 20 small patty cakes. They are dry by design — meant for tea, with lemon curd, jam or whipped cream, and best eaten the day they are baked.
The Five Roses Cook Book was issued by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company to promote its Five Roses brand flour, and it was assembled largely from recipes sent in by home cooks across Canada. Oven temperatures are absent throughout, and the telegraphic style is characteristic; one plausible explanation is that a contributor writing for a wood or coal range had no number to give. "Patty" here descends from the same root as the French pâté, meaning a small individual pastry rather than anything flat and round; patty pans were common equipment in kitchens that made tarts, and cake batters were sometimes baked in them when a cook wanted individual portions. The recipe belongs to a large family of eggy, fatless sponges that flourished once chemical baking powder became cheap and reliable in the late nineteenth century, letting a cook get lift from three eggs and a spoonful of powder rather than from creamed butter.