Quisset Cake
One-half cup butter rubbed to a cream with 1 1/2 cups sugar, add yolks of 3 eggs well beaten with 2 tablespoons of milk, 2 cups Gold Medal flour in which has been sifted 2 level teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 cup milk, 6 tablespoons chocolate melted over hot water, and lastly 3 whites of eggs. Bake in two narrow loaves.
Frosting: 2 cups granulated sugar, 3/4 cup milk, 1 ounce butter. Boil fifteen minutes, beat till thick, spread while warm. Is best after the third day.
A plain chocolate loaf cake of the reader-contributed sort, finished with a boiled milk-and-sugar frosting that sets like soft fudge. The frosting is the part that goes wrong; read that point first.
- The frosting is candy, not buttercreamTwo cups sugar with 3/4 cup milk and butter, boiled and beaten, is a boiled fudge-type icing. It must reach the soft-ball stage, about 238F on a thermometer, and then be beaten off the heat until it loses its gloss and thickens. "Boil fifteen minutes" is a timing rather than a temperature; go by temperature, and spread it fast, because it firms quickly once it thickens.
- OvenThe recipe gives none. Moderate, 350F, for two loaves; start checking at 35 minutes and expect 40-50 depending on pan width.
- "Two narrow loaves"Two small loaf tins, roughly 8x4 inches, or one 9x5 baked longer. The batter is about six cups, so do not crowd a single small pan.
- 6 tablespoons chocolateThis means unsweetened baking chocolate, melted and measured as liquid, so about 3 ounces by weight. Modern semisweet or Dutch cocoa is not a direct swap; cocoa alone would leave the cake dry and the sugar unbalanced.
- The whites"Lastly 3 whites of eggs" almost certainly means beaten and folded in last, as the period convention had it, though the recipe does not say so. There is baking powder as well, so the whites are lightening an already leavened batter.
- Butter and sugar"Rubbed to a cream" is creaming, and it wants soft butter and several minutes of work. Half a cup of butter carrying a cup and a half of sugar needs the full time to hold air.
- FlourGold Medal was Washburn-Crosby's household flour, close enough in use to a modern all-purpose bag. Measure by spooning and leveling, or use about 250 g for the two cups.
- Keeping itThe recipe claims it is "best after the third day," which is plausible for a butter-and-chocolate loaf under a fudge frosting that seals the crumb. Wrap airtight at room temperature; refrigeration can make the frosting grainy.
- YieldTwo small loaves, about 16 slices in total.
Quisset -- Quissett is a small harbor village in Falmouth on Cape Cod, near Woods Hole, and cakes named for places of that kind turn up in turn-of-the-century American cookbooks, often as a recipe carried home from a summer boarding house or a church supper and thereafter known by where it was eaten. The Gold Medal Flour Cook Book was issued by Washburn-Crosby of Minneapolis to promote its flour, which is why the brand name is written into the ingredient list itself. Boiled frostings were common in this period: a cook made icing much as she made fudge, by boiling granulated sugar with milk and beating it to the point of crystallization. The note that the cake is best on the third day suits a household in which cake was baked to last the week rather than the afternoon.