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Ellen's Nut Cake
2 small cups sugar 3 cups Gold Medal flour 1 cup sweet milk 4 tablespoons melted butter Bake in layers. 3 eggs 2 heaping teaspoons baking powder mixed in last cup of flour
A plain layer cake written in the shorthand of a period when every cook already knew the order of operations. Two things need filling in before you start: the method, and the nuts.
- The nuts are missingDespite the title, no nuts appear in the ingredient list — either an omission in the original printing or an assumption that Ellen's readers knew. Figure on 1 cup of chopped walnuts or hickory nuts, floured lightly and folded in last.
- "Small cups"Cup measures were not uniformly standardised until the end of the nineteenth century, and "small" appears to signal something under the half-pint (8 fl oz) cup. On that reading, roughly 1 1/2 cups of granulated sugar total is a fair guess for a three-cup-flour cake.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh milk, specified to distinguish it from the sour milk or buttermilk used with saleratus. Whole milk is the closest match.
- FlourGold Medal was a Washburn Crosby brand milled from hard spring wheat; the all-purpose flour sold under the name today is a blend, but close enough that no substitution is needed. Measure by spooning into the cup and levelling; scooping packs in appreciably more flour and will dry the crumb.
- Baking powder in the last cupThis is the hinge. Sifting the leavening through the final addition of flour distributes it evenly without a separate sifting step — worth doing as written rather than dumping it into the batter.
- Assumed methodBeat the eggs and sugar well, then add the milk and flour alternately, with the melted butter. Melted butter as directed here gives a slightly denser, closer crumb than creamed solid butter, so beat the eggs thoroughly to compensate.
- Oven and pansThe batter should fill two 9-inch or three 8-inch round pans. The original gives no temperature or time; in a modern oven, 350F for 25 to 30 minutes, until a tester comes out clean and the edges pull from the pan, works.
- FinishingNo filling is named, which was normal — the cook chose. A boiled white icing or a caramel frosting suits a nut cake, and the recipe serves 10 to 12.
Cookbooks published by flour millers were among the most widely circulated cookery texts in America from the 1880s onward: Washburn Crosby, which sold Gold Medal, gave them away or sold them cheaply to keep its brand name in the reader's hands at every measure of flour. A page like this one may have come from such a promotional book, though nothing in the recipe establishes it — the flour is named, everything else is generic, and the instructions assume a cook who needs no coaching. A first-name credit is at least as characteristic of a community, church or manuscript collection that simply named the brand of flour the contributor used. "Ellen's Nut Cake" is the kind of title that travelled from a handwritten card into print with its household attribution intact. Nut cakes themselves were a staple of the American layer-cake era, when black walnuts and hickory nuts were gathered rather than bought and a cake was the obvious use for them.