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Sponge biscuits
Beat the yolks of twelve eggs for half an hour; then put in one and a half pounds of beaten sifted sugar, and whisk it till it rises in bubbles; beat the whites to a strong froth, and whisk them well with the sugar and yolks, work in fourteen ounces of flour, with the rinds of two lemons grated. Bake them in tin mould buttered, in a quick oven, for an hour; before they are baked, sift a little fine sugar over them.
A fatless, chemically unleavened sponge in the eighteenth-century manner: the eggs are the only lift, which makes the beating the whole recipe. Read the oven note before you start, because as written the heat and the time do not agree.
- The hinge: aerationWith no butter and no raising agent, everything depends on how much air the eggs hold. Whisk yolks and sugar until the mixture is pale and falls in a thick ribbon that sits on the surface for a few seconds, and fold the flour in by hand in three additions so you do not knock the air out.
- Half an hour of beatingThat is a hand-whisk figure. A stand mixer on high reaches the same ribbon stage in 6 to 10 minutes for the yolks and sugar, and 3 to 4 minutes for the whites.
- "A quick oven" for an hour"Quick" is usually read as somewhere around 400-425F, which will scorch a lean sponge long before an hour is up. The hour may reflect large tin moulds in a falling wood-fired oven, or a single deep cake rather than small biscuits; the recipe does not say. Small piped or moulded biscuits want 350F for 10 to 18 minutes; a loaf-sized mould wants 325-350F for 40 to 50 minutes, tested with a skewer.
- Quantities in modern termsOne and a half pounds of sugar is about 3 1/3 cups granulated; fourteen ounces of flour is about 3 cups plus 2 tablespoons, spooned and levelled. "Beaten sifted sugar" means loaf sugar crushed and sieved fine — caster or superfine sugar is the direct equivalent and dissolves better in the yolks.
- Tin mouldsPeriod sponge-biscuit tins were small fluted or finger-shaped moulds; this recipe calls only for buttering, though flouring or sugaring the tin is a common precaution. Madeleine tins, ladyfinger pans, or a piping bag onto parchment all work; the batter is stiff enough to hold a piped shape.
- The sugar sifted overMore than decoration: a dusting of fine sugar just before baking helps set the thin crisp shell associated with a sponge biscuit rather than a plain cake. Dust, wait a minute, dust again if you want a more pronounced crust.
- Lemon rindGrate only the coloured zest of unwaxed lemons, and add it to the yolks rather than at the end so the oil disperses. Two lemons to twelve eggs is assertive by modern standards but correct for the style.
- Yield and keepingTwelve eggs makes a very large batch; the count depends entirely on mould size, but expect many dozens of finger biscuits or two loaf-sized sponges. They stale quickly but dry well; kept in a tin they are the classic base for trifle, charlottes, and serving with wine or custard.
"Biscuit" here keeps its older, broader sense of a light baked sweet rather than anything hard or twice-baked, and sponge biscuits of this type "" sometimes called Naples biscuits or Savoy biscuits in English books of the period "" were a standing item in the confectioner's repertoire long before baking powder existed. The whole family is generally traced to the egg-foam batters said to have been developed by Italian and French court confectioners in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the modern savoiardi or ladyfinger is the same formula in a smaller mould. Recipes like this one were valued in a household kitchen precisely because they kept: dried out in a tin, the biscuits were the structural element in trifles, tipsy cakes and moulded creams, soaked in wine or custard rather than eaten dry. The prodigious beating times in such receipts are a reminder that the labour was someone else's, and that a dozen eggs and a pound and a half of refined sugar marked this as a dish for a house with both money and hands to spare.