Nut Cake
2 eggs 1/3 cup boiling water 1 cup sugar 1 1/2 cups pastry flour 1/2 cup chopped walnuts 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon vanilla This cake is put together in the same way as the Plain Cake, folding in the flour and nuts at the same time.
A hot-water sponge in the old style, leaning on a companion "Plain Cake" recipe for its method. The instruction that matters is the order: eggs and sugar beaten to real volume, the boiling water beaten in, then flour and nuts folded together in one motion.
- The borrowed methodThe recipe supplies no method of its own, only a cross-reference to the Plain Cake, so the sequence has to be inferred: eggs beaten until thick and light, sugar added, the boiling water beaten in, then the flour (sifted with the salt) folded in together with the chopped walnuts, with the vanilla going in at some point before the flour. Check the Plain Cake recipe for the actual order. Overworking after the flour goes in is what flattens this style of cake.
- Why boiling waterThe hot water helps dissolve the sugar and loosens the egg foam so the flour can be folded in without deflating it, and it is generally credited with the slightly moist, tender crumb that distinguishes these cakes from a dry sponge. The recipe does not say how to add it; adding it gradually while beating is the usual modern practice.
- Leavening is ambiguousNo baking powder appears in the ingredient list, and whether any belongs depends on the Plain Cake recipe this one refers back to. Made as written it will rise on egg foam alone, giving a dense, close sponge; if the companion recipe calls for a teaspoon of baking powder, sift it with the flour.
- Pastry flourPastry flour is softer and lower in protein than modern all-purpose. A rough substitute is 1 1/2 cups all-purpose with a tablespoon or two removed and replaced with cornstarch; the full cake-flour swap (2 tablespoons per cup) goes further than pastry flour requires.
- OvenThe original gives no temperature. A modern moderate oven, around 350F, and roughly 25 to 30 minutes for a cake of this size, baking until it springs back and a tester comes out clean.
- Pan and yieldThis is a small batter. The recipe names no pan; the quantities suit one 8-inch round or square pan, or a loaf pan, greased and floured or lined with paper, and would give something like six to eight servings.
- The nutsChop the walnuts fine rather than coarse. Large pieces sink through a light batter and settle on the bottom; tossing them with a spoonful of the measured flour helps hold them in suspension.
- ServingPlain, dusted with sugar, or with a simple boiled or butter icing. The crumb is not sturdy enough for heavy layered fillings.
Hot-water sponges like this one belong to a family of cakes found in American cookbooks and cooking-school manuals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when careful beating and folding were taught as skills rather than assumed. Part of their appeal was economy: two eggs, no butter, and a cup of sugar produced a light cake without the most expensive fat in the pantry. Walnuts, black or English depending on region, were among the commonest nuts in such recipes. The book's habit of writing one full method and then cross-referencing it -- "put together in the same way as the Plain Cake" -- fits the domestic-science approach of the period, which treated a cake as a formula to be varied rather than a fixed dish.