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Sponge Cake (No. 1)
3 cups sugar 4 cups Five Roses flour 1 cup cold water 2 teaspoons cream of tartar 1 teaspoon soda Flavoring.
Beat eggs until very light. Add sugar and beat again. Sift the flour and cream of tartar together. Dissolve soda in the water, and add to the eggs and sugar, mixing in the flour at once, Flavor to taste, and bake in a moderate oven for 30 minutes or more.
To Brown Sponge Cakes-Do not paper the tins, but rub with melted suet and then sprinkle with fine sugar.
A large, old-style leavened sponge — closer to a hot-milk or plain white cake than to the eggs-only génoise the name suggests. The printed ingredient list has a gap that has to be filled before you start.
- The missing eggsThe method opens with "beat eggs until very light" but no quantity is listed — a typesetting loss, not a trick. For 4 cups flour and 3 cups sugar, comparable sponge cakes of the period use six to eight whole eggs; treat the number as genuinely unknown and lean toward eight for lift.
- Moderate ovenRead that as roughly 350°F (period guides put a moderate oven at about 350-375°F). At this size the batter is unlikely to be done in 30 minutes; a deep pan wants 45-55 minutes, which the original's "or more" allows for. Test with a skewer in the centre.
- Cream of tartar and sodaTogether these are homemade baking powder; 2 teaspoons cream of tartar to 1 teaspoon soda works out by the usual conversion to about four teaspoons, a generous tablespoon, of modern baking powder. Because the acid and base meet in the bowl rather than in the oven, get the pans filled and into the heat without delay.
- Sift, and mean itFlour of this period was less uniform than modern flour, and the cream of tartar needs to be evenly distributed for an even rise; uneven leavening, undissolved soda especially, is what leaves streaks and yellow-brown spots. Sift the two together at least twice.
- One cup of water onlyThere is no butter and no milk here, so the whole liquid is a cup of cold water carrying the soda. The batter will look stiffer than a modern cake batter; do not thin it, as the eggs supply the rest of the moisture.
- Suet and sugar for browningThe browning note calls for beef suet rubbed on the tin, then a dusting of fine (caster) sugar — the sugar caramelises against the metal for a crisp brown shell. Melted butter or a neutral shortening does the same job; suet is simply what was in the kitchen.
- Yield and pansThis is a big mix, likely enough for two large tube pans or three 8-inch layers, though the missing egg count makes any estimate approximate. Halving it is sensible for a household of two or three, and it halves cleanly if you settle on an even number of eggs.
- Flavoring"flavor to taste" would ordinarily mean a teaspoon or two of vanilla, lemon extract, or grated lemon rind; the page itself does not specify.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by Lake of the Woods Milling Company and given away or sold cheaply to promote its flour; it is often said to have been one of the most widely distributed cookbooks in Canada by the 1910s and 1920s, which is why the flour is named in the ingredient list rather than simply called flour. The recipe belongs to a generation of "sponge cakes" that had drifted from the strict meaning of the term on egegg — a true sponge rises on beaten egg alone, while this one hedges with cream of tartar and soda, the household leavening pair that preceded packaged baking powder and remained in print long after it. The direction to grease tins with melted suet is a reminder of a kitchen where beef fat was rendered at home and kept on hand, and the alternative to greasing — lining tins with paper — is offered here as the plainer, paler option.