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Eggless Cake
One and one-half cups sugar; one-half cup shortening, two cups sweet milk; three and a half cups flour, in which has been sifted the baking powder (three rounding teaspoons) and a pinch of salt. If other shortening than butter is used a tablespoon of brandy or other liquor will disguise any possible suggestion, but other flavouring may be added as well without conflicting.
The original gives ingredients and almost nothing else: no pan, no oven, no time. What follows fills the gaps a competent baker will need, plus a note on the leavening, which is the part most likely to cause trouble.
- The leavening is the hingeThe leavening is worth watching -- three rounding teaspoons of baking powder against three and a half cups of flour is generous, and the single-acting powders of the period behaved differently from today's double-acting tins. Three level teaspoons is the safer measure; too much can give a coarse crumb and a soapy, metallic aftertaste.
- Method, since none is givenCream the sugar and shortening, add the milk alternately with the sifted dry ingredients, and beat only until smooth. With no eggs to set the structure, overworking the batter after the flour goes in is the fastest route to a tough cake.
- OvenA cake of this type wants a moderate oven, 350F, for roughly 35-45 minutes in two 8-inch layers or 50-60 minutes in a loaf. Test with a skewer at the centre.
- Sweet milkThis simply means fresh whole milk, as opposed to the soured or buttermilk that older recipes call for when they want soda rather than baking powder. Whole milk is the right substitution; skim will make a drier cake.
- ShorteningIn this period that could mean lard, beef suet, or one of the early vegetable compounds; the recipe's own wording treats butter as the alternative it is measured against, and the fats it has in mind evidently carried some flavour of their own. Butter or modern vegetable shortening at half a cup works directly; if using oil, reduce slightly to about seven tablespoons.
- Why the brandyThe tablespoon of liquor is offered to disguise the taste of whatever fat is used in place of butter rather than as a flavour in its own right, though the recipe allows other flavouring to be added as well. With butter or a neutral shortening it can be dropped entirely, or replaced with a teaspoon of vanilla or lemon extract.
- Texture to expectWithout eggs this bakes up close-grained and slightly damp rather than light, and it stales quickly. It is at its best on the day it is made, and it takes a fruit filling or a poached-fruit accompaniment well, which is presumably why it sits in this book.
- YieldEnough for two 8-inch layers; the batter is on the large side for a single 9-by-5 loaf. Serves eight to ten.
Eggless cakes appear all through late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century household cookery, long before wartime rationing made them famous. Eggs were seasonal and expensive: hens laid poorly in winter, and a cook who wanted cake in February either paid for stored eggs of doubtful quality or did without them. Chemical leavening, sold in tins from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, made the substitution easier, which is why recipes like this one lean so hard on baking powder to do the lifting and aerating that beaten eggs would otherwise supply. The frank instruction to hide the taste of the shortening with brandy is a period detail worth noticing: household fats were often home-rendered lard or drippings with a pronounced flavour of their own. Its place among the introductory recipes of a fruit cookery book suggests it was meant as a plain foundation, to be served under stewed or fresh fruit rather than eaten alone.