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Seven Eggs (Eight ounces of Castor Sugar)
Eight ounces of Castor Sugar.
Six ounces of Butter.
Six ounces of Flour, sifted. 4 Put the eggs and sugar into a basin; stand the basin over a stewpan of boiling water, and whip well for twenty minutes. Take a cake-tin and line it with kitchen paper; melt the butter, and grease both cake-tin and paper with some of it; when the eggs and sugar are sufficiently whipped P2 stir into them the flour and the remainder of the melted butter. Turn the mixture into the prepared tin, and bake in a moderate oven for about thirty minutes.
This is a genoise — a whole-egg sponge leavened entirely by the air beaten into warm eggs, with melted butter folded in at the end. Everything depends on the whisking and on not knocking the air back out.
- The stray charactersThe "4" and "P2" in the text are stray marks carried over from the printed page, not quantities or steps. Ignore them.
- Castor sugarSuperfine or caster sugar, finer than granulated but not powdered. Granulated will work over a bain-marie since the heat dissolves it, but caster dissolves faster and gives a more even foam.
- Whipping over hot waterThe bowl sits over, not in, simmering water; the eggs should reach roughly blood heat to hand-hot, not hotter, or they scramble at the edges. Twenty minutes is right for a hand whisk. With an electric mixer, take the eggs to about 105–110F over the water, then beat off the heat until the mixture falls from the whisk in a ribbon that holds its shape for several seconds — usually 8 to 10 minutes.
- The hinge: foldingThe flour and butter go in by folding, not stirring, whatever the wording says. Sift the flour over the surface in two or three additions, and stir a spoonful of the foam into the melted butter before folding that back in — pouring warm butter straight into the batter collapses it.
- Butter temperatureMelt the butter and let it cool to barely warm. Hot butter deflates the eggs; solidified butter leaves streaks.
- Moderate ovenNo temperature is given; "moderate oven" is conventionally read as somewhere around 325–350F (165–175C). Bake on the middle shelf and do not open the door for the first twenty minutes.
- Kitchen paperPlain unwaxed paper used as a liner — parchment today. Butter the tin, line the base and sides, and butter the paper as directed.
- Tin and yieldNo size is given. Seven eggs with 6 oz flour would suit roughly a 9-inch round tin about 2 inches deep, or two 8-inch layers baked closer to 20–25 minutes; it would serve about 10 to 12.
- DonenessThe cake should spring back when pressed and be just shrinking from the sides. A genoise is dry-crumbed by design; it is normally moistened with syrup or a liqueur before filling.
Sponges raised on beaten egg alone predate chemical leavening entirely, and the technique of warming eggs and sugar over water to build a stable foam is generally traced to Italian and French confectionery practice, where the whole-egg version came to be called genoise after Genoa. Late-Victorian and Edwardian cookery books of the "high class" sort or for for households and for the professional trade ather than a finished cake: the plain baked round is the base for layer cakes, trifles, petits fours and iced gateaux, and the book gives no filling and no serving note. In this recipe the seven eggs, not the flour, set the scale of the cake.