Orange Cake
A cake to be eaten while fresh is made by making the layer cake formula, and putting between the layers oranges that have been sliced fine, sprinkling them with powdered sugar.
This is a variation rather than a standalone recipe: Estes assumes you already have his plain layer cake batter and only tells you what goes between the layers. A few things need filling in.
- The "layer cake formula"Estes is pointing back to his own plain layer cake recipe given elsewhere in the book; what follows is a modern stand-in rather than his proportions. Any butter-based yellow layer cake will serve, roughly a 1-2-3-4 formula (1 cup butter, 2 cups sugar, 3 cups flour, 4 eggs, 1 cup milk, baking powder), baked in two or three greased 8- or 9-inch pans at about 350F for 25-30 minutes. Neither the temperature nor the timing comes from this page.
- Oranges "sliced fine"Peel, then cut away the white pith and the membrane between segments before slicing thin crosswise. Membrane left in place turns chewy and bitter against soft cake.
- Control the juiceDrain the sliced fruit in a sieve for ten or fifteen minutes before it goes on the cake, or the juice will soak into the layers. Powdered sugar sprinkled on the slices will draw out still more liquid, so sugar them lightly and assemble at once.
- "While fresh" means the same day"While fresh" means eat it soon -- The line reads as a practical caution. There is no cooked filling here to bind the fruit, so the cake is at its best within a few hours of assembly and does not hold well overnight.
- Powdered sugarIn 1911 this usually meant finely ground sugar, not necessarily the starch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today. Modern confectioners' sugar substitutes without trouble; the cornstarch in it does no harm.
- Top and sidesNo frosting is specified. A dusting of powdered sugar over the top layer, or plain whipped cream served alongside, suits it better than buttercream, which fights the fruit.
- YieldA two-layer 9-inch cake gives 8 to 10 slices and takes two or three oranges.
Good Things to Eat (1911) was written by Rufus Estes, who was born enslaved in Tennessee in 1857, cooked for the Pullman Company's private-car service, and later for the subsidiary that became U.S. Steel; his book is generally cited as the first cookbook published by an African American professional chef. Its cake chapter works the way a working kitchen works — one base formula, then a run of short entries telling you what to put between the layers — which is why this one reads as an instruction rather than a recipe. Fresh oranges in a cake filling say something about the period too: by the 1900s Florida and California fruit moved east by refrigerated rail in quantity, and citrus that had been a Christmas luxury a generation earlier was ordinary enough for a chef to slice into a layer cake without comment.