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Cocoanut Cake
1 teacup fresh butter. 3 teacups white sugar. 3 1/2 teacups flour. Whites of ten eggs. 1 cup sweet milk. 1 light teaspoonful soda. 2 light teaspoonfuls cream of tartar. A little essence of lemon.
Bake in cakes an inch thick and spread with icing, having grated cocoanut stirred in; pile one on another, allowing a little time for drying off. In making the icing, reserve some plain for the outside of cake. Finish off by sprinkling on the prepared cocoanut.--Miss P.
Cocoanut Cake.
Beat to a fine cream three-quarters of a pound of butter and half a pound of sugar. Add gradually eight eggs well beaten, then mixed, one tablespoonful essence of lemon, one small nutmeg, grated; mix all well together, then stir in lightly half a pound flour in turn with half a pound of grated cocoanut. Pour the mixture in a well-buttered pan, and bake quickly.--Mrs. C. V. McG
Two versions from two contributors: a white layer cake leavened with soda and cream of tartar, and a richer pound-cake style loaf with coconut mixed through the batter. Both assume fresh coconut grated by hand, which is the main thing standing between them and a modern kitchen.
- Teacups and poundsNineteenth-century teacups are usually reckoned at somewhere around 6 fl oz, smaller than a modern cup, though the book gives no equivalence and the switch to "1 cup sweet milk" may or may not mean a different vessel. The second recipe is measured by weight, which is easier: 12 oz butter, 8 oz sugar, 8 oz flour, 8 oz grated coconut.
- Soda and cream of tartarOne teaspoon soda with two of cream of tartar is homemade baking powder, in about the classic 1:2 ratio. Mix them into the flour dry and get the batter into the oven promptly, since the reaction begins as soon as the milk hits it.
- Ten egg whitesThat is roughly 1 1/4 cups of whites. Beat them to soft, not stiff, peaks and fold them in last; the recipe gives no method. Leftover yolks would have had other uses in the kitchen, though this book does not say what they were.
- "Bake quickly"Retrospective tables usually put a quick oven somewhere in the 400-450F range, though the figures vary by source. That would suit a thin layer but risks scorching the second recipe's rich loaf; for a butter-and-egg batter that heavy, 325-350F for an hour or more is a safer reading of the instruction.
- Inch-thick layersThe 3 1/2 teacups of flour make a large batter, enough for roughly three 9-inch layers at that thickness; around 350F for 20-25 minutes is a reasonable modern guess. The direction to allow "a little time for drying off" between layers appears to mean letting each iced surface set so the stack does not slide.
- The coconutFresh grated coconut is unsweetened and moist, and it is what both recipes mean. Sweetened flake will make the cake cloying and the icing loose; use unsweetened desiccated or frozen grated coconut, and if using dried, moisten it with a little coconut milk.
- Essence of lemonThis is lemon extract, considerably stronger than zest. A teaspoon in the layer cake and no more than two in the larger loaf; the original tablespoon will taste of furniture polish with modern extract.
- The icingNo icing recipe is given here, though the book carries icing recipes elsewhere. A boiled icing (sugar syrup beaten into egg whites) holds grated coconut better than a plain confectioners'-sugar glaze, and both types were in use in the period.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (copyright 1877, usually dated 1878), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree, gathered its recipes from named and initialled contributors, which is why the same cake appears twice in slightly different hands: one layer cake using only whites, one rich loaf closer to pound cake. Coconut is generally said to have reached Virginia tables by ship from the Caribbean, and by the 1870s whole nuts appear to have been common enough in Southern markets that a cake calling for half a pound of grated meat was ambitious but not extravagant. The work of cracking, paring and grating it was considerable, which is often given as part of the reason coconut cake became a holiday and celebration cake in the South rather than an everyday one, a position it still holds. The first version pairs soda with twice its weight in cream of tartar, a cook raising her own leavening at the table rather than reaching for a tin.