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A Delicious Cake
2 1/4 pounds flour. 2 pounds butter. 24 eggs, yolks and whites. 12 ounces almonds. 2 tablespoonfuls rose water, in which the almonds should be beaten. 2 wine-glasses of French brandy. 2 heaping teaspoonfuls beaten mace, and a butter-plate of preserved lemon-peel.--L.T.
Delicious Cake. 2 cupfuls of sugar. 1 cupful of butter. 1 cupful of milk. 3 cupfuls of flour, after being sifted. 3 eggs. 2 tablespoonfuls baking powder. Bake in jelly-cake pans, and between each layer put fruit jelly, icing of chocolate and cocoanut each. This quantity will bake five thin cakes.--Mrs. Mc G.
Two cakes printed back to back and both given as bare ingredient lists, in the style of a receipt copied out for someone who already knew the method. The first is an old-fashioned pound-type cake of enormous size; the second is a Victorian layer cake.
- The first cake has no sugarA pound cake built on 2 1/4 lb flour, 2 lb butter and 24 eggs would ordinarily carry close to 2 lb of sugar, creamed with the butter. None is listed here; the list as printed is incomplete, whether through a printer's omission or because the opening of the receipt fell on the preceding page. Treat it as incomplete.
- ScaleThe first recipe makes several quarts of batter and will not fit a standard tube pan. Halving or quartering it is the practical route, and even a quarter gives a generous 9-inch cake.
- Wine-glass and butter-plateA wine-glass in nineteenth-century American receipts is about 2 fluid ounces, so two glasses of brandy is 1/2 cup. A "butter-plate" of preserved lemon-peel is a genuinely vague measure -- a small individual plate, so somewhere near 1/2 to 3/4 cup chopped; there is no fixed conversion.
- Almonds beaten in rose waterBlanch and skin the almonds, then grind them to a smooth paste with the rose water. The liquid helps keep the nuts from oiling as they are pounded, as well as contributing its own flavour.
- MaceTwo heaping teaspoons of beaten (that is, pounded) mace is a strong hand by modern taste. Ground mace from a jar is finer, so more of it packs into a spoon; start at half.
- The baking powder in the second cakeTwo tablespoons to three cups of flour is far too much with today's double-acting powder -- the cake will rise, crack and fall, and taste metallic. Period powders were weaker and less reliable; 3 to 4 teaspoons is the modern equivalent.
- Jelly-cake pansShallow round tins, 8 or 9 inches across, filled thinly. "Five thin cakes" means five layers stacked with alternating fillings, not five separate cakes.
- OvenNeither recipe gives heat. The layers want a moderate oven, 350F, for 12 to 15 minutes; the large pound-type cake wants 300 to 325F and upwards of two hours, tested with a straw.
- AssemblyThe filling instruction reads as a sequence: fruit jelly on one layer, chocolate icing on the next, coconut on the next, so no two adjoining layers repeat. Ice the sides only if you want it to hold.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, edited by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1878, was assembled from receipts sent in by some 250 contributors, which is why so many entries close with a name or a set of initials -- "L.T.", "Mrs. Mc G." The first cake here belongs to the older Virginia tradition of the great pound cake: equal weights of the principal ingredients, two dozen eggs beaten by hand for the only leavening, and the luxuries of the sideboard -- French brandy, rose water, mace, preserved lemon peel -- signalling a household with a stocked store closet. The second shows what had changed by the 1870s: chemical baking powder, commercially available and heavily advertised, measured in cups rather than pounds, and baked in thin layers for a stacked cake. The two sitting side by side is a fair picture of a cookbook catching a kitchen mid-transition.