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Another Filling for Cake
Dissolve one-half cake of chocolate in one teacup of cream or milk, and let it cool slowly; then take it off the fire and stir in the well-beaten whites of three eggs mixed with one pound of sugar. Let it cool, stirring all the time till you find that it will harden when cool.
Spread between the cakes while it is still soft.--Mrs. E. C. G.
A soft chocolate filling of the kind spread between layers while still warm, thickened by sugar rather than by cooking. The instructions are slightly garbled — it says to cool it and then take it off the fire — so read it as: melt the chocolate in the milk over gentle heat, take it off, and let it cool while you work in the sugar and whites.
- Half a cake of chocolateNineteenth-century "cake" chocolate was unsweetened and sold in blocks of varying size, anywhere from a couple of ounces to half a pound, so the amount is genuinely ambiguous. About 4 oz of unsweetened baking chocolate is a reasonable reading; a smaller cake would mean considerably less.
- A teacupA teacup is conventionally reckoned smaller than a modern measuring cup, about 6 fl oz, though the book does not define it. Use whole milk or single cream; the fat helps the filling stay pliable rather than setting brittle.
- A pound of sugarThat is roughly 2¼ cups granulated, or close to 4 cups sifted confectioners' sugar. Confectioners' sugar dissolves into the warm mixture without grit and is closer to what the texture wants; granulated will need patient stirring as the mixture cools.
- Melting the chocolateDirect heat will seize or scorch chocolate in milk. A bowl over barely simmering water, or the lowest burner setting with constant stirring, gets it smooth. Take it off as soon as it is uniform.
- The raw whitesThe whites are folded into a mixture that has been cooled, so they are never brought to a safe temperature. Use pasteurized egg whites, sold in cartons, if the cake will be served to children, the elderly, or anyone pregnant or immune-compromised.
- Knowing when to stopThe hinge is the line about stirring until it will harden when cool. Test by dropping a little on a cold plate: when it stiffens to a spreadable fudge rather than running, it is ready. Spread at once — it sets fast and tears the crumb if you wait.
- YieldEnough to fill and lightly top a two- or three-layer 8- or 9-inch cake. It is a filling, not a coating for the sides.
Layer-cake fillings occupy their own run of entries in Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878), contributed by a number of different women and credited variously by full name and by initials. The compilation method — Marion Cabell Tyree gathering receipts from Virginia housekeepers by name — preserves the small disagreements between cooks rather than smoothing them out, and also preserves their assumptions: that chocolate meant a hard unsweetened cake to be grated or broken and dissolved, not a bar to eat out of hand, and that a pound of sugar was a reasonable unit to keep in the house. Chocolate fillings are generally said to have become common in American cookbooks in the decades after the Civil War, as manufactured baking chocolate grew cheaper and more reliable; before that, chocolate in a Virginia household was more often a drink than a dessert.