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Angel Cake
Beat the whites of eight eggs till frothy. Then add one teaspoon of cream of tartar and continue beating till the whites are perfectly stiff. Gradually add one cup of sugar, beating hard all the time. Sift together three-fourths of a cup of flour and one-fourth of a teaspoon of salt, and fold it lightly into the beaten whites. Flavor with three-fourths of a teaspoon of vanilla and pour into an unbuttered angel cake pan. Put into a rather hot oven and allow the cake to rise quickly. Cool it off slightly, and as soon as the cake begins to brown cover with buttered paper. It will take from forty-five to fifty minutes to bake.
A plain, sound angel food formula from the era before stand mixers. The only genuinely confusing part is the oven direction, which describes a two-stage bake in the language of a coal range.
- The hinge: fold, do not stirOnce the flour goes in, every stroke costs you volume. Sift the flour and salt together two or three times, then add it over the surface in three or four additions, cutting down through the meringue and turning it over with a large spatula until no dry streaks remain.
- "A rather hot oven," then coolerThe instruction to let the cake "rise quickly," then "cool it off slightly," describes a two-stage bake. The recipe gives no figures; a hot start of roughly 400F falling to 325-350F is one reasonable modern reading. Held at a high heat for the full fifty minutes, the crust would likely colour well before the centre set.
- The buttered paperA heat shield. Note that the recipe calls for cooling the oven slightly and covering with paper, so the two work together rather than the paper substituting for the drop in heat. Lay a sheet of parchment or foil loosely over the top once the surface colours, without pressing it onto the cake.
- Egg whitesEight whites from modern large eggs come to roughly 1 cup, about 240 ml; older eggs tended to run smaller, so measure by volume rather than counting. Whites whip highest at room temperature and must be entirely free of yolk.
- Sugar and flourUse superfine (caster) sugar if you have it, added a spoonful at a time so it dissolves in the meringue. The recipe specifies only "flour"; cake or pastry flour, sifted, gives the tenderest crumb, and all-purpose will work but gives a slightly tougher one.
- Cream of tartarA teaspoon is the standard dose for eight whites, about an eighth of a teaspoon each. It stabilises the foam and keeps the crumb white; there is no leavening in this cake beyond the air you beat in.
- The unbuttered panDeliberate, not an oversight. The batter must grip the sides to climb. Use a plain aluminium two-piece tube pan, never nonstick and never a silicone mould, and do not grease or flour it.
- CoolingInvert the pan the moment it leaves the oven and leave it upside down until completely cold, an hour or more. A hot angel cake left upright collapses under its own weight. Loosen with a thin knife before turning out.
- Doneness and yieldThe top should spring back when pressed and a skewer come out clean. This is a smaller batter than a modern twelve-white angel cake, so in a 9-inch tube pan expect a shallower cake and correspondingly fewer slices. It is best the day it is made and cuts cleanly only with a serrated knife or a cake comb.
Angel cake, or angel food cake, is an American invention of the second half of the nineteenth century and depended on three things arriving at once: cheap finely milled white flour, granulated sugar fine enough to dissolve in egg foam, and the geared rotary egg beater, which made whipping eight whites to stiffness a matter of minutes rather than a wearying half hour with a whisk or a bundle of twigs. The name refers to the whiteness and lightness of the crumb, and the later appearance of devil's food cake gave cookbooks a tidy pair of opposites. Its origin is often traced to Pennsylvania German kitchens, though the claim is traditional rather than documented; what is certain is that by the time this version was printed the cake had become a standard test of a cook's hand, since it contains no butter, no chemical leavening and nothing at all to rescue a meringue that has been beaten flat.