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Rhubarb Short Cake
Use same recipe as above for layers.
When cake is done instead of spreading with chopped strawberries, spread stewed rhubarb between layers sandwich fashion.
Sprinkle sugar on top and serve hot.
This is a variation entry rather than a standalone recipe: it borrows the shortcake layers from the preceding strawberry version and swaps the filling. A few things need pinning down before you bake.
- The missing half of the recipe"Same recipe as above" points to the strawberry shortcake immediately preceding it, since this entry substitutes rhubarb for chopped strawberries. That preceding recipe is not reproduced here, so its dough is unknown; books of this period use both a rich sweetened biscuit dough and, less often, a cake batter under the name "short cake". If you are working from this page alone, any standard sweet biscuit shortcake will stand in.
- Oven heatThis page gives no oven guidance of any kind. Modern practice for a biscuit-type shortcake layer is a hot oven, in the region of 425-450F for 12-15 minutes.
- Stewed rhubarbRoughly 1 lb of rhubarb cut in 1-inch lengths with 3/4 to 1 cup sugar and a splash of water, covered, over low heat for 10–15 minutes until the stalks collapse. Rhubarb throws a great deal of liquid; drain some off or the layers will turn to paste before they reach the table.
- LeavesUse the stalks only. Rhubarb leaves contain oxalic acid in quantity and are not eaten; the recipe does not say so, but only the stalks are intended.
- Sugar on topThe recipe simply says to sprinkle sugar over the top; it does not specify which kind. Do it just before serving, while the layer is hot, rather than in advance.
- Serve hotThe instruction is not decorative. A biscuit shortcake is best eaten soon after it leaves the oven and stiffens as it cools, so assemble it at the last moment.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Winnipeg and Montreal to promote its Five Roses flour, and like most milling-company books it is organised around what a bag of flour can do — hence pages thick with shortcakes and biscuit doughs. Shortcake in the North American sense means a sweetened biscuit split and filled with fruit, distinct from British shortcake or shortbread, and strawberry is generally taken to be the best-known version. Rhubarb here is the practical substitute: in Canadian gardens it is ready weeks before strawberries, survives hard winters with no attention, and was one of the first fresh things a household could pick in spring. Recipes that begin "use same recipe as above" are characteristic of these promotional books, which were sold cheaply or given away and squeezed as many variations as possible onto the page.