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Sponge Drops
Beat three eggs lightly, add three-fourths of a cup of granulated sugar, one heaping cup of flour sifted with one teaspoon of cream of tartar and one-half teaspoon of soda (or one heaping teaspoon of baking powder). Flavor with one teaspoon of lemon extract. Drop in teaspoons, three inches apart, on buttered tins. Bake in a quick oven. It is safe to bake one cake as a trial to see if the mixture needs any more flour. The cakes should spread in the oven, and they ought to be about one-half inch thick when baked.
A plain drop sponge with no fat and no liquid beyond the eggs, so the batter's consistency depends entirely on how large the eggs are. The trial cake the recipe suggests is not optional advice — it is the whole method.
- Quick ovenRead this as roughly 400-425F. These are small and thin; they will likely be done in 5 to 8 minutes, and should be pulled while the edges are just tan and the centers still pale.
- Bake the trial drop firstEgg sizes vary enough to change the batter noticeably, and there is no milk or butter to buffer it. Bake one teaspoonful, and if it spreads into a lace-thin puddle add flour a tablespoon at a time; if it stays domed instead of spreading to about half an inch, the batter is too stiff.
- Cream of tartar and sodaThe paired leaven is the older system; the parenthetical heaping teaspoon of baking powder is the modern equivalent and works fine. Use about 1 1/4 teaspoons of double-acting baking powder and sift it with the flour as directed.
- Beat three eggs lightly"Lightly" here means whole eggs broken up until uniform, not whipped to a foam — the leavening is chemical.
- Buttered tinsPeriod baking sheets were generally heavier and darker than modern ones. On a modern light aluminum sheet, butter alone tends to let the thin batter run and catch; parchment holds the shape better and releases cleanly.
- Flour"One heaping cup" is roughly 5 to 5 1/2 oz. Pastry or all-purpose both work; measure by weight if you can, since the trial cake is otherwise doing all the work.
- Lemon extractA full teaspoon of modern lemon extract is assertive. Half a teaspoon, or the grated zest of one lemon, is an alternative.
- Yield and keepingExpect roughly three dozen or more drops from this batter, about 1 1/2 inches across. Fat-free sponge goes dry quickly; store airtight, or sandwich them in pairs with jam.
Sponge drops belong to a family of small unfat cakes — naples biscuits, lady fingers, sponge fingers, savoy drops — that were common on the nineteenth-century tea table because they needed no butter, only eggs, sugar and flour. The shift visible in this recipe is chemical: cream of tartar with saleratus or soda was a standard American household leaven by the mid-nineteenth century, and the parenthetical offer of "one heaping teaspoon of baking powder" suggests that commercially blended powders had become common enough for a cookbook to accommodate both kitchens. The instruction to bake a single trial cake fits a period when eggs came in whatever size the hens produced, flour varied by mill and season, and few home cooks weighed ingredients — the test drop was the measuring instrument.