One-Egg Cake
One-half cup butter, 1 cup of sugar, 1 egg, 2 cups of Gold Medal flour, 1 cup of sweet milk, 3 teaspoons baking powder. Mix as directed and bake in a hot oven.
Pound Cake, No. 2 1 lb. sugar 1 lb. butter 14 oz. Gold Medal flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 10 eggs 1 lemon, grated rind and 1/2 the juice, if large Soda the size of a pea, dissolved in 1 tablespoon of cold water. Beat eggs separately and very thoroughly, adding whites last, folding them in carefully. Citron or other fruit may be added, making yellow fruit cake.
Two cakes crowded onto one page: a small everyday butter cake and a full ten-egg pound cake. Both assume you have already read the book's general cake directions, which is what "mix as directed" means.
- "Mix as directed"The book's general cake directions are not reproduced on this page; the standard method of the period was to cream the butter and sugar until pale and light, beat in the egg, then add the sifted flour and baking powder alternately with the milk. Alternating the additions matters here, since a single egg gives very little emulsifying power and the batter may curdle if the milk goes in at once.
- "Hot oven"Period tables generally put a hot oven at about 400-425F, which will scorch a butter cake of this richness. For a one-egg cake in an 8-inch square or two 8-inch rounds, 350-375F is right; 25 to 30 minutes for layers, 35 to 40 for a single pan.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh whole milk, named to distinguish it from the soured or buttermilk that older soda recipes called for. Use whole milk; skim gives a drier crumb.
- Baking powderThree teaspoons to two cups of flour is heavy by modern standards, and period powders were often weaker than what is sold today. Two teaspoons of today's baking powder gives a better crumb and no soapy aftertaste.
- Pound cake by weightWork in weight rather than volume: 1 lb sugar is about 2 1/4 cups, 1 lb butter is four sticks, and 14 oz flour is roughly 3 1/2 cups sifted. The flour is two ounces short of the old equal-weights formula.
- The soda"The size of a pea" is about 1/8 teaspoon. With no acid in the batter beyond a little lemon juice it does almost no leavening; it is there to soften the crumb and deepen the colour, and more will taste of metal.
- Beating the eggsTen eggs beaten separately, whites folded in last, is the only lift this cake gets. Beat the whites to soft peaks rather than stiff and dry, and fold in thirds so the heavy butter batter does not collapse them.
- Pan and oven for the pound cakeThis is a very large batter, something over four pounds. Bake it in a 10-inch tube pan or two large loaf pans at 300-325F, allowing 1 1/2 hours or more, and test with a skewer at the centre. A slow oven is essential or the outside sets long before the middle.
- YieldThe one-egg cake serves eight to ten; the pound cake serves twenty or more and keeps, well wrapped, for a week.
Both cakes belong to a cookbook in which the brand name has worked its way inside the measurements themselves. The one-egg cake is a thrift recipe of the sort that multiplied once chemical baking powder became cheap and dependable in the late nineteenth century: with a strong leavener, a cook no longer needed a half-dozen eggs to raise a cake, and eggs were seasonal and expensive. The pound cake beside it is the older tradition, named for the pound each of butter, sugar, flour and eggs that made up the original English formula, and it is raised almost entirely by the air beaten into those eggs. Setting the two on one page shows the moment plainly: the labour-intensive weighed cake of the older tradition and the quick cup-measured cake of the newer one sharing a section, with the same bag of flour serving both.