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Peanut Loaf
4 tablespoons butter 1 cup sugar 1 egg 1½ cups Five Roses flour 1½ teaspoons baking powder ½ cup milk 1 cup peanuts (cut fine).
Bake in a loaf. 3 eggs
A plain creamed-butter loaf cake with chopped peanuts, written in the telegraphic style of its book: ingredients listed, method assumed. The cook is expected to know the standard cake procedure.
- The stray "3 eggs"The line ends with "3 eggs" after the baking instruction, which contradicts the single egg in the list. This is almost certainly a compositor's error or an orphaned line from a neighbouring recipe; the butter, sugar and flour quantities given are proportioned for one egg. Treat the ingredient list as authoritative rather than trying to reconcile the two.
- Method, since none is givenCream the butter and sugar, beat in the egg, then add the flour sifted with the baking powder alternately with the milk, and fold in the peanuts last. Flouring the chopped nuts lightly keeps them from sinking to the bottom of the loaf.
- Five Roses flourA Canadian hard-wheat white flour, generally stronger than typical American all-purpose. Ordinary all-purpose flour works; the loaf may be marginally more tender.
- Which peanutsShelled, skinned and roasted peanuts, unsalted, are the likeliest intention here. Salted cocktail peanuts will make the loaf noticeably savoury, though not unpleasantly so. "Cut fine" means chopped, not ground to butter.
- No salt listedThe recipe omits salt entirely. A quarter teaspoon added with the flour improves it considerably, particularly with unsalted nuts.
- Oven and pan"Bake in a loaf" specifies the shape, not the heat; no temperature is given. A moderate oven, around 350F, suits this batter. Use a standard 8½ x 4½ inch loaf tin, greased and floured, and expect 45 to 55 minutes; test with a skewer at 45.
- YieldOne small loaf, about ten slices. The batter is stiff for a cake batter and will need spreading into the corners of the tin rather than pouring.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Montreal and distributed in enormous numbers to Canadian households in the years around the First World War, its recipes drawn largely from contributions by women who used the brand's flour. Recipes like this one show peanuts moving from a snack food to a baking ingredient, a shift usually linked to cheap North American supply and to the era's enthusiasm for nuts as an inexpensive source of protein. The compressed, method-free style is characteristic of these miller's cookbooks: they were written for cooks who already knew how to make a butter cake and simply wanted new proportions and additions to ring changes on it.