Ashland Cake
1/2 cup butter 1 cup sugar 4 eggs, whites 10 drops lemon extract 1/2 cup milk 1 cup Gold Medal flour 1/2 cup corn starch 1 teaspoon baking powder Bake in two deep jelly cake tins Filling: Two cups granulated sugar, 1/4 cup of boiling water. Boil till it will spin, then pour slowly boiling hot on the well-beaten whites of 2 eggs, beating all the time. Beat till thick enough not to run, then add 1/2 teaspoon citric acid (powdered), 1 teaspoon each of lemon and vanilla, spread between the layers and over the cake, or, ice with maple fondant.
A white layer cake of the cornstarch-lightened type, finished with a boiled (Italian meringue) icing. The original assumes a cook who knows her own stove, so the missing numbers are the first thing to supply.
- Oven temperature and timeNo temperature is given because none could be. Bake at 350F, 25 to 30 minutes for two deep 8- or 9-inch layers, until a tester comes out clean and the layers just pull from the sides of the pan.
- Deep jelly cake tinsJelly cake tins were round, straight-sided and shallower than a modern cake pan; sizes varied, and even a "deep" one would be shallower than a modern layer pan. Two modern 8-inch round pans work, though the layers will sit slightly lower.
- The cornstarchHalf a cup of cornstarch against one cup of flour is not a thickener here but a softener: it dilutes the gluten and gives the fine, tight, pale crumb these cakes were prized for. Sift the flour and cornstarch together at least twice with the baking powder or the starch will streak.
- Measuring the flourPeriod cup measures assume flour sifted before measuring and levelled. Spooning modern flour lightly into the cup and levelling gives roughly 4 oz, which is what the recipe intends.
- Egg whitesFour whites, beaten stiff and folded in last, share the lifting with the teaspoon of baking powder. The recipe does not specify the method; folding rather than beating them in will keep the crumb lighter. Use the four yolks elsewhere the same day.
- "Boil till it will spin"The thread stage, 230 to 235F on a thermometer. Older than the thermometer, this test meant a drop from the spoon drew a fine thread. Below it the icing stays soupy; much above it the icing sets to candy before it is spread.
- Citric acidSold now as sour salt, in the kosher or canning aisle. Half a teaspoon here mainly cuts the flat sweetness of two cups of sugar; because it goes in after the syrup is boiled and beaten, it does little to the sugar itself. Cream of tartar is sometimes put in its place, but it is a weaker acid and will not give the same tartness.
- Raw whites in the icingThe hot syrup cooks the whites only partially. If the cake is for anyone elderly, pregnant or immune-compromised, use pasteurized whites, which whip and hold perfectly well in a boiled icing.
- YieldA two-layer cake serving 10 to 12. The icing quantity is generous and will cover top and sides with some to spare.
Ashland Cake is generally traced to Ashland, the Lexington, Kentucky estate of Henry Clay, and it belongs to a large family of nineteenth-century American cakes named for houses, politicians and battlefields — Lady Baltimore, Washington Pie, Harrison Cake. Whether Clay's kitchen ever produced it is undocumented; the name attached itself to a genteel white layer cake and stuck. The recipe itself is a period type rather than an heirloom: a "silver cake" made with whites only and cut with cornstarch, a combination that became practical as roller-milled patent flours spread through ordinary kitchens in the 1870s and 1880s, boxed cornstarch having been available commercially well before that. Its appearance in a Gold Medal book is an inference from the branded ingredient, though a plausible one — Washburn-Crosby's promotional cookbooks were built to show what their flour could do, and a fine-grained white cake was the most flattering demonstration available.