Clay Cake
3 cups sugar. 1 cup butter. 4 cups flour. 1 cup sweet milk. 6 eggs. 1 teaspoonful soda in the milk. 1 teaspoonful cream of tartar in the flour. Flavor with vanilla. Bake it in layers.
Icing for the Cake.--Beat the whites of four eggs into a froth, and add nine teaspoonfuls of pulverized sugar to each egg, flavoring it with vanilla. Then grate up two large cocoanuts, and after icing each layer, sprinkle grated cocoanut on it. Put the layers on each other as in making jelly cake.--Mrs. I. W. Cocoanut Cake. 2 cups powdered sugar. 1/2 cup butter. 3 eggs. 1 cup milk. 3 cups flour. 2 teaspoonfuls cream of tartar. 1 teaspoonful soda.
Bake in jelly-cake pans. Filling: one grated cocoanut; to half-pound of this add the whites of three eggs beaten to a froth, one cup of powdered sugar; lay this between the layers of the cake; mix with the other half of the cocoanut four tablespoonfuls powdered sugar, and strew thickly on top of the cake.--Mrs. D. C. K.
One, Two, Three, Four Cocoanut Cake. 1 cup butter. 2 cups sugar. 3 cups flour. Whites of 4 eggs. 1 teaspoonful cream of tartar. 1/2 teaspoonful soda. 1/2 small cocoanut, stirred in at the last.--Mrs. D. C. K.
Cocoanut Cake. 1 teacup of butter. 3 teacups of sugar. 3 1/2 teacups of flour. Whites of 10 eggs. 1/2 cup sweet milk, with one teaspoon not quite full of soda. 2 teaspoonfuls cream of tartar. Essence of lemon.
Beat the eggs very light. Cream the butter, then mix the ingredients gradually. Sift the cream tartar with the flour, and dissolve the soda in the milk, and add to the cake last. Bake in pans; an inch thick when baked. Mix prepared cocoanut with the icing; ice the top of the first cake with the cocoanut icing, dry it slightly; lay another cake on top, and ice again, and continue until the last cake is added, then ice all over. When the last coat of icing is put on, sprinkle the prepared cocoanut all over the cake, to give it a frosted appearance.--Mrs. M. S. C.
Four related coconut layer cakes, all built on the same nineteenth-century chemistry: soda dissolved in the milk, cream of tartar sifted into the flour, no baking powder in sight. The oven is never mentioned, which was normal in 1878 and unhelpful now.
- Oven and pansNo temperature or time is given anywhere on the page; a moderate oven, around 350F, suits these batters. "Jelly-cake pans" are shallow 8- or 9-inch round tins; the fourth recipe asks for layers an inch thick when baked, which will take roughly 20 to 25 minutes, and a batter of this size should fill three to four tins.
- Soda and cream of tartarThis pairing is homemade baking powder, activated the moment the wet soda meets the acid flour. One teaspoon soda plus two teaspoons cream of tartar is roughly equivalent to four teaspoons modern double-acting baking powder. If you use the original method, get the batter into the pans promptly; the lift is largely gone within a few minutes.
- Teacups versus cupsThe last recipe measures in teacups while the others say cups. A period teacup is smaller than a standard 8-ounce measure, commonly reckoned at about three-quarters of a cup, but the books are inconsistent. Measure all ingredients in one recipe with the same vessel and the proportions will hold.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh unsoured milk, specified to distinguish it from sour milk, buttermilk or clabber, which were also in everyday use. Whole milk is what you want.
- Coconut"Two large cocoanuts," grated, is something like six to eight cups of fresh meat. Unsweetened desiccated or freshly frozen grated coconut works; figure roughly 8 ounces of dried coconut per whole nut called for. "Prepared cocoanut" means the ready-shredded dried product sold at the time.
- The icing is deliberately thinNine teaspoonfuls of sugar to each egg white is only three tablespoons, far less than modern royal icing. Expect a loose, glossy coating that soaks slightly into the layers rather than a stiff frosting. Beat the whites to soft peaks first, then add the sugar gradually, and add more if you want it to hold a shape.
- Raw whitesNone of these icings is cooked. Use pasteurized egg whites, or beat with the sugar over simmering water to a meringue if serving anyone who should avoid raw egg.
- Whites-only battersThe third and fourth recipes use whites alone, giving a pale, fine-grained cake. Beat them separately to soft peaks and fold in last, whatever the order the text implies, or the batter will deflate.
- YieldEach of these makes a three- or four-layer cake serving 12 to 16. They are rich and dry out quickly once cut; keep them covered.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree, was assembled from contributions by named and initialed Virginia housekeepers, which is why four versions of essentially the same coconut layer cake sit side by side, each credited to a different woman. Cakes carrying political surnames were a nineteenth-century commonplace, and Clay Cake is generally taken to honor Henry Clay, though the connection is traditional rather than documented and the recipe itself is a plain layer cake distinguished only by its filling. The coconut itself is worth noting: by the 1870s coconuts are said to have been arriving in East Coast ports in some quantity, and grated dried coconut was becoming available as a shelf product, so a recipe could call for two nuts at a time in an inland Virginia kitchen. The soda-and-cream-of-tartar leavening dates the book too; commercial baking powder existed but many cooks still combined the two agents themselves.