Home › Recipes › To make cream cakes
To make cream cakes
Beat the whites of nine eggs to a stiff froth, stir it gently with a spoon lest the froth should fall, and to every white of an egg grate the rinds of two lemons; shake in gently a spoonful of double refined sugar sifted fine, lay a wet sheet of paper on a tin, and with a spoon drop the froth in little lumps on it near each other. Sift a good quantity of sugar over them, set them in the oven after the bread is out, and close up the mouth of it, which will occasion the froth to rise. As soon as they are colored they will be sufficiently baked; lay them by two bottoms together on a sieve and dry them in a cool oven.
This is a meringue under an older name: whipped whites, sugar, lemon zest, dried rather than truly baked. Everything hinges on low, slow heat and dry air.
- Heat, not baking"After the bread is out, and close up the mouth of it" describes the falling residual heat of a cooling brick oven, to which no exact figure can be assigned. In a modern oven, work at the lowest available setting, around 200-225F, with the door propped slightly open on a wooden spoon so moisture escapes.
- The lemon quantityTwo lemon rinds per white gives eighteen lemons' worth of zest for nine whites, which is far beyond anything the froth will carry, and may well be a slip in the printing. Some receipts of the period direct the rind to be rubbed off against a lump of sugar so that only what clings is used. Treat the figure as loose and use the zest of one or two lemons for the whole batch.
- Double refined sugarThe whitest, hardest loaf sugar of the day, rasped and sifted. Caster sugar is the direct equivalent; granulated will not dissolve fully and will weep syrup on the surface.
- A spoonful per whiteAbout a tablespoon of sugar per egg white is lean by modern standards, where meringues generally carry considerably more sugar per white; note too that the recipe sifts a further "good quantity" over the tops before they go in. The lean version tends to bake crisp and fragile rather than chewy, and is less forgiving of underbeaten whites.
- Folding"Stir it gently with a spoon lest the froth should fall" is the whole technique. Add the sugar in stages and fold with a spatula, cutting down and over, rather than stirring.
- The wet paperDamp paper on tin kept the bottoms from scorching and let the shells lift cleanly. Parchment on a heavy sheet does the same job with no soaking.
- Judging doneness"As soon as they are colored" means the faintest cream tint, not brown. They should lift off the paper with a dry, hollow base; if the centre is still tacky they need more time at low heat, not higher heat.
- Two bottoms togetherThe shells are paired flat-side to flat-side to finish drying. The title suggests they were meant to be joined with sweetened whipped cream before serving, though this receipt does not say so; if you do fill them, fill at the last minute or the shells go soft.
- YieldNine whites dropped in small spoonfuls give roughly five dozen shells, or thirty finished pairs. Halve the recipe unless you are feeding a crowd; meringues keep in a tin but not in a humid kitchen.
"Cream cakes" here belongs to the English family of receipts also printed as kisses, sugar puffs and meringues - little sweetened egg-white shells dried in the slack heat of a bread oven and joined in pairs with whipped cream. They are a direct product of the wood-fired oven's economy: the bread came out, the oven mouth was stopped, and the long fall of residual heat was used for biscuits, meringues and drying fruit rather than wasted. The name meringue appears in French confectionery writing in the late seventeenth century, and in English translation soon after, though its origin remains contested; it reached English cookbooks alongside a taste for elaborate sugar work, but the domestic receipt stayed plain, and its cost lay in the sugar. Double-refined sugar was among the most expensive grades sold, boiled and clarified twice and sold in hard loaves that had to be broken, pounded and sifted before use, which makes a dish built almost entirely from sugar and egg white a quiet display of a well-supplied larder.