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Cream for the Same
2 cupfuls of sugar. 1/2 pint of sweet milk. 1/3 cupful of flour. 1 egg. Heat the milk to boiling heat, beat the egg and sugar together; take a little milk, and make a smooth paste with the flour, and stir into the sugar and egg, then stir all into the milk. Let it boil until thick, then spread between cakes.--Mrs. A. H.
CAPITAL CAKE. (Delicious.) 1 pound of sugar. 4 cupfuls of flour, after being sifted. 1 cupful of butter. 1 cupful of morning's milk. 6 eggs beaten light. 2 teaspoonfuls of cream tartar, sifted in the flour. 1 teaspoonful of soda dissolved in the milk. Flavor with lemon or nutmeg.--Mrs. M.
Two items run together here: a boiled flour-and-egg filling meant for the cake recipe that precedes it in the book, and a separate pound-cake-style batter given as a bare ingredient list. Both need a little translation.
- The hinge: boil the starch outA flour-thickened cream must actually come to a boil and hold there a minute or two, stirring constantly, or it tastes of raw paste and thins again as it cools. Thick enough to mound on the spoon is the mark.
- Half a pint of milkOne cup. Against that, two cupfuls of sugar is extraordinarily sweet even by nineteenth-century standards; a half to two-thirds cup gives a filling most modern palates will accept, though cutting it that far will change the consistency and the quantity you end up with.
- Temper the eggThe instruction has you combine egg, sugar and flour paste, then stir the lot into boiling milk. Add the hot milk to the egg mixture in a thin stream first, then return everything to the pan, or the egg will scramble.
- YieldEnough filling for between two 8-inch layers; how much you get depends on how much of the sugar you keep. Cool it to room temperature before spreading or it will soak the cake.
- "Morning's milk"Milk fresh from that day's milking, meaning sweet and unsoured. Whole milk is the equivalent; the recipe is not asking for buttermilk.
- A pound of sugarAbout 2 1/4 cups granulated. The four cupfuls of flour are measured after sifting, which matters here: sift first, then measure, or the cake comes out dry.
- Cream of tartar and sodaTwo teaspoons cream of tartar with one of soda is a homemade single-acting leavener, in the neighbourhood of 4 teaspoons of modern baking powder. Keep them separated as written, acid in the flour and soda in the milk, so nothing reacts until the batter comes together -- and get it into the oven promptly once it does.
- Method the book assumesCream butter and sugar, beat in the eggs, then add flour and milk alternately. The list gives no method because it was written for readers presumed to know one already.
- Oven and panNo temperature is given. Bake at 350F: about 50 to 60 minutes in a 10-inch tube pan, 30 to 35 minutes for three 8-inch layers, testing with a skewer.
The title tells you how these books worked: recipes ran in strings, and "Cream for the Same" is a filling for whatever cake came immediately before it on the page, of little use once separated from its neighbor. Boiled flour-and-egg fillings like this one belong to the era when the American layer cake was gaining ground on the solid pound cake and loaf. The paired cake is essentially a lightened pound cake, still measured in a pound of sugar but raised with cream of tartar and soda, a common home leavening at a time when commercial baking powder was still working its way into the pantry.