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Devil's Food Cake
Two and a half cups of sifted flour, two cups of sugar, one-half cup of butter, one-half cup of sour milk, one-half cup of hot water, two eggs, one-half or one-fourth cake of chocolate, one teaspoon of vanilla, one teaspoon of soda. Grate chocolate and dissolve with the soda in the hot water. Use white icing. -Mrs Nelson Ruggles.
A bare list of quantities with almost no method, typical of the reader-contributed cake recipes these books collected. The proportions are sound; everything else has to be supplied.
- The missing methodCream the butter and sugar, beat in the eggs, then add the sifted flour alternately with the sour milk, and last the hot water in which the chocolate and soda have been dissolved. Add the vanilla at the end.
- "One-half or one-fourth cake of chocolate"A cake of baking chocolate in this period was usually an 8-ounce block scored into 1-ounce squares, so the range is roughly 2 to 4 ounces of unsweetened chocolate. The size varied by brand, so the amount is genuinely imprecise; 3 ounces gives a cake that tastes the way the name promises.
- Sour milkNot spoiled milk but naturally soured raw milk, acidic enough to react with the soda. Buttermilk is the direct substitute; a half cup of whole milk with a scant half teaspoon of vinegar or lemon juice, left five minutes, also works.
- Soda in the hot waterDissolving the soda with the grated chocolate in hot water was a common trick of the era. It bleeds colour out of the chocolate and turns it reddish; cakes of this kind sometimes went by the name red devil's food. Mix it in and get the batter into the pan without delay, since the soda begins working at once.
- Salt and leaveningThere is no salt and no baking powder. A half teaspoon of salt is worth adding; the soda alone is adequate leavening given the acid in the sour milk.
- Pan and ovenThe batter fills two 9-inch round layers or one 9x13 pan. The recipe gives no baking directions; 350F suits it, about 25 to 30 minutes for layers and 35 to 40 for the larger pan.
- White icingThe instruction most likely means a boiled white frosting, egg white beaten with hot sugar syrup, a common finish for cakes of this kind. A plain confectioners' sugar glaze does the same job with far less trouble.
- YieldTwelve to sixteen servings.
Devil's food appears in American cookbooks from around the turn of the twentieth century, and the name is generally understood as a foil to angel food cake, which was white, fatless and airy where this one is dark, buttery and dense. Its reddish crumb, produced by alkaline baking soda acting on the tannins in unsweetened chocolate, was part of the point; the modern habit of using Dutch-process cocoa and baking powder removed that colour, and the effect survives mainly as red velvet cake. The recipe's form here is as telling as its content. It is a reader contribution credited to Mrs. Nelson Ruggles, and the assumption throughout is that any woman reading it already knew how to cream butter, judge an oven, and boil an icing to the right thread, so only the proportions and the one unusual step needed setting down.