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Hot Water Sponge Cake
Beat the whites of three eggs, add one cup of fine sugar, then three yolks well beaten, one teaspoon of vanilla or lemon, one cup of pastry flour sifted with one-half teaspoon of baking powder, and two tablespoons of boiling water. Bakę in a loaf from twenty to thirty-five minutes.
A very short ingredient list that depends almost entirely on how much air you beat in and how gently you fold it out. The original gives no oven temperature, so that is the first gap to fill.
- The hinge: fold, do not stirEverything after the beaten eggs is a folding job. Sift the flour over the batter in two or three additions and cut through with a spatula; once the flour is moistened, stop. The boiling water goes in last and slackens the batter noticeably, which is normal.
- Oven temperatureBake at 325-350F. Sponge batters with no fat and a large proportion of egg scorch on the outside before the centre sets if pushed higher.
- Pan and preparation"A loaf" tells us nothing more than the shape; a small loaf tin, around 8x4 inches, suits this quantity of batter, filled about two-thirds. Lining the bottom with parchment helps, and the cake is easier to turn out if left to cool in the tin.
- Pastry flourPastry flour is softer than modern all-purpose. Cake flour is the closest substitute; failing that, measure a cup of all-purpose, remove two tablespoons and replace them with cornstarch.
- Beating the whitesBeat to soft, glossy peaks before the sugar goes in, then beat until the mixture holds a firm ribbon. Stiff, dry whites break into lumps when the yolks and flour arrive.
- Timing and donenessTwenty minutes is optimistic for a loaf; expect 30-35 at 350F. The top should spring back when pressed and a skewer come out clean and dry, not merely free of batter.
- Flavouring"Lemon" here almost certainly means lemon extract rather than juice, as it does in most cookbooks of the period. Half a teaspoon of extract with a little grated zest is one way to sharpen the flavour.
- YieldOne small loaf, eight to ten slices. It is dry by the second day, so it is best served fresh, with fruit or whipped cream.
Hot water sponge cakes turn up in American cookbooks from the later nineteenth century onward, and they mark a shift in what a sponge cake was allowed to be. Older sponge cakes relied on eggs alone and on long beating; here a half teaspoon of baking powder does part of the lifting and two tablespoons of boiling water thin the batter so it spreads and rises evenly, producing a tender crumb for less labour. Commercial baking powder was cheap and widely available by the 1880s, and recipes like this one were the practical result: a cake with no butter in it, quick enough for an ordinary afternoon, and forgiving enough to print without much explanation. There is an economy to it as well, since three eggs go a good deal further than the large number an all-egg sponge demanded.