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Lemon Loaf Cake
Beat to a cream one and a half cups of sugar, one-half cup of butter, adding gradually, the beaten yolks of two eggs, one cup of sweet milk, grated rind of two lemons, three and one-half cups of flour, with a pinch of salt and heaping teaspoonful of baking-powder sifted through the flour, whipping in at the last of the mixing the stiff-beaten white of one egg (a half-teaspoonful of grated nutmeg and cup of raisins may be added sometimes to vary this). To make the icing place one and a half cups of sugar in a saucepan with juice of two lemons and grated rind of one. Boil till it strings from spoon, when pour over the stiffwhipped white of one egg and beat with fork till icing begins to stiffen, then spread on top and sides of cake.
A plain butter cake leavened with baking powder, finished with a boiled-sugar icing. The original gives neither pan, temperature nor time, so those are the first gaps to fill.
- Oven and panBake in a greased and floured 9x5-inch loaf pan at 350F for 55 to 70 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean. The batter is stiff enough that the centre takes a while; tent with foil if the top colours early.
- Sweet milkPlain whole milk. The word distinguishes it from the sour milk or buttermilk used in soda-leavened cakes; recipes calling for sweet milk generally pair it with baking powder rather than saleratus, which needs an acid to work against.
- The flour is the weak pointThree and a half cups against one cup of milk and two eggs gives a very dry, dense crumb by modern standards; period flours were often softer and lower in protein than today's all-purpose and may have absorbed less liquid. Start with 2 3/4 to 3 cups (roughly 330-375 g) and add more only if the batter will not hold a soft mound on the spoon.
- LeaveningOne heaping teaspoon for that much flour is light; modern practice is roughly 1 to 1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder per cup of flour, which would suggest three teaspoons or so here. Two to three level teaspoons will give a better rise, and older baking powders may also have been less reliably active than current double-acting ones.
- Creaming orderDespite the wording, cream the butter first and then work in the sugar; beating sugar into softened butter is what aerates the mixture. Fold the whipped white in with a light hand at the end.
- "Boil till it strings from spoon"The syrup is ready when a drizzle from the spoon falls in a thread rather than in drops; this is traditionally the thread stage, about 230-235F, though boiled icings are commonly taken to the soft-ball range of 238-240F for a firmer set. Undercooked syrup gives a runny icing; taken much past 245F it sets hard and cracks as you spread it.
- Icing techniquePour the hot syrup in a thin steady stream down the side of the bowl into the beaten white, beating constantly. A hand mixer does this far better than a fork. Spread while still warm and just fluid enough to move under the knife.
- Zest and juiceTwo lemons yield roughly 2 tablespoons of zest and 1/4 to 1/3 cup of juice. Zest before juicing, and grate only the yellow; the white pith is bitter.
- YieldOne loaf, 10 to 12 slices. With the nutmeg and raisins it becomes a plainer keeping cake and is good without any icing at all.
Lemon loaf cake sits at the point where American home baking settled on manufactured baking powder in place of earlier leaveners such as pearlash and saleratus: the recipe's "heaping teaspoonful of baking-powder sifted through the flour" would have been an unremarkable instruction by the 1890s, when commercial baking powders were widely sold, but it would have been impossible a lifetime earlier. "Loaf cake" generally means a cake baked in a single deep pan rather than in layers or a shallow sheet, and the term predates the modern sense of a sweet quick bread. The boiled icing here, hot syrup whipped into egg white, was a common fine finish of the period, valued because it set glossy and firm without refrigeration; the same method underlies Italian meringue.