Plain Cake
3 eggs 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/3 cup boiling water 1 cup sugar 1 1/2 cups pastry flour Flavoring Break the eggs into a mixing bowl, add the salt. Set the bowl in a pan of boiling water. Beat the eggs with a Dover egg beater till light. Then add one-third cup of boiling water. Beat again till light. Then add a little of the sugar, and beat. Then add a little more sugar, and beat. Continue adding a little sugar and beating till all the sugar is beaten in and the batter is very stiff and light. Remove the bowl from the water. Beat in the flavoring, then with a flat wire whip, called a "sensible egg whip," fold in the flour carefully and with as few strokes as possible, not sifting all the flour onto the batter at once, but sifting on a little flour and folding it in with two or three strokes, then sifting on a little more flour, and folding again. Continue till all the flour is folded in, but do not fold any longer than is necessary to mix in the flour. Pour the batter into the tin, which has a piece of oiled paper fitted into the bottom, and bake in a moderate oven till a broom straw stuck into the cake comes out clean.
When the cake is removed from the oven, turn it bottom side up to cool in the tin, placing something under one edge of the tin to allow the air to circulate under it. This will keep the cake from falling. When cold, cut around the edge and remove it from the tin.
A nut cake may be made from this recipe by putting some of the batter in the bottom of a cake tin, and then sprinkling in some coarsely chopped nuts, then adding more cake batter, then more nuts, then the rest of the batter. Raisins cut into halves may also be used with the nuts.
This cake may be baked in layers, and various fillings used to make layer cakes, such as walnut, fig, maple, cream, strawberry, and orange; or it may be baked as cup cakes, or baked in a sheet and used for jelly roll.
This is a hot-water sponge cake: no butter, no baking powder, all of its lift coming from eggs whipped warm. Everything depends on how much air you get in and how little of it you knock out.
- The hingeThere is no chemical leavening here at all. The whole eggs must be beaten over hot water until they are pale, tripled in volume and hold a ribbon; the sugar is added in small additions precisely so the foam is never deflated. If the foam is slack going into the flour, the cake will be dense and no oven can fix it.
- Dover egg beaterA hand-crank rotary beater. A hand mixer does the same work in about 6 to 8 minutes over the water bath; a stand mixer will do it, but you lose the gentle warmth, so warm the eggs in the bowl over hot water first, then whip.
- Sensible egg whipA flat wire whisk. A large balloon whisk or a wide silicone spatula folds the flour in just as well. Sift the flour over the surface in three or four additions as directed and stop the moment no dry streaks remain.
- Pastry flourSofter and lower in protein than modern all-purpose. Cake flour is the nearest easily found substitute, though it is softer still; measured at the same 1 1/2 cups it will serve. All-purpose will work but gives a tougher crumb; replace 3 tablespoons of it with cornstarch if that is all you have.
- Moderate ovenAbout 350F. The recipe never says what size or shape of tin, so times are approximate: roughly 25 to 35 minutes for a single cake, layers 18 to 22 minutes, cup cakes 15 to 18. The broom straw test is a toothpick or thin skewer.
- The tinLine the bottom with parchment as instructed but leave the sides bare and ungreased. The batter needs to grip the sides as it climbs, which is also why it is cooled inverted.
- FlavoringNo quantity is given. One teaspoon of vanilla, or a teaspoon of grated lemon zest with a little of its juice, suits this amount of batter.
- YieldAbout 8 to 10 servings from a single cake, or roughly a dozen cup cakes. Serve plain, or with fruit and cream; it is dry by design and takes a filling well.
Cakes like this one belong to the family of hot-water or "boiling-water" sponges that appear in American cookbooks in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, by which time the cheap tinned rotary egg beater had made whole-egg foams easier for ordinary households. Before that, a cake raised on eggs alone meant long arm work with a birch whisk or a bundle of quills. The boiling water is a small piece of practical physics: it warms and thins the egg, which lets it take up more air, and it adds moisture to a batter that has no fat in it. The closing paragraph, turning one batter into nut cake, layer cake, cup cakes and jelly roll, is characteristic of instructional cookery of this period, where the point was to teach a method the cook could then bend rather than a single fixed dish.