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Delicate Cake
2 cups white sugar. 2½ cups corn starch. 8 tablespoonfuls butter. Whites of 8 eggs. 1/2 teaspoonful soda, dissolved in milk. 1/2 teaspoonful cream tartar in corn starch. Flavor with juice of one lemon.--Mrs. R. R. Delicate Cake.
One pound pulverized white sugar, seven ounces of butter (stirred to a cream). Whites of 16 eggs, beaten stiff. Stir in 1 pound of sifted flour. Flavor to the taste. Bake immediately.--Mrs. A. H.
Two versions of the same idea from two contributors: a white cake made with egg whites only. Neither gives a pan, an oven or a time, and the first omits the quantity of milk entirely, so both need reading before you begin.
- The missing milkMrs. R. R. says only "soda, dissolved in milk" with no amount. A batter of this size wants roughly 3/4 to 1 cup of liquid, but the original is genuinely silent; judge by consistency, adding milk until the batter drops thickly from the spoon.
- Corn starch as the flourThe first cake is entirely corn starch, no wheat flour at all. That was a recognised Victorian cake type, prized for a pale, tender, almost powdery crumb. It has no gluten, so it is fragile and must be handled gently coming out of the pan; other printed versions of the period often combine corn starch with wheat flour for strength.
- Soda and cream of tartarHalf a teaspoon of each is the old two-part leavening, roughly a teaspoon of modern baking powder, though the proportions are not balanced: half a teaspoon of cream of tartar will only take up about a quarter teaspoon of soda. Note the placement: soda in the liquid, cream of tartar sifted into the dry starch, so they meet only in the bowl. Once they do, get the cake into the oven.
- Butter by the spoonfulEight tablespoonfuls is half a cup, 4 oz. In the second recipe, seven ounces of butter to a pound of sugar and a pound of flour makes a rich, close-grained cake rather than a foam cake.
- Sixteen egg whitesThat is roughly two cups of whites, about 16 fl oz. Beaten stiff and folded into a creamed butter-and-sugar base, they are the only lift the second cake gets; there is no chemical leavening in it. Underbeaten or overfolded whites give a heavy, damp cake.
- OvenThe original gives no oven and no time; as a modern equivalent, bake at 325-350F. A delicate cake browns easily and the whole point is a white crumb and a pale crust; a hot oven ruins the look. Reckon 45 minutes to an hour for a tube or deep round pan, testing with a straw.
- Lemon juice as flavouringThe juice of one lemon adds acid as well as flavour. With soda already in the batter, expect a little extra fizz; lemon extract or zest gives the flavour without shifting the balance.
- YieldThe first recipe fills a 10-inch tube pan or two 9-inch layers, serving 12 to 16. The second, with a pound each of sugar and flour and sixteen whites, is substantially larger and will need a bigger pan or a second one.
- The leftover yolksSixteen yolks need not be waste; they could go into a gold cake, boiled custard or mayonnaise. Plan the same before you start cracking.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree, gathered its recipes from named contributors reduced to initials, which is why two "Delicate Cakes" sit side by side with no attempt to reconcile them. Delicate cake, sometimes called silver cake, was the white half of a matched pair: the whites went into this, the yolks into a gold cake, and a hostess could put both on the table from one basket of eggs. The corn starch version reflects a mid-nineteenth-century enthusiasm for refined starch as a cake flour, encouraged by the commercial corn starch that came onto the American market in the decades before the Civil War; cookbooks of the period are full of "corn starch cake" recipes promising an unusually fine, white crumb. That whiteness was the whole ambition, at a time when a pale cake meant refined sugar, refined starch and enough eggs to spare the yolks.