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Delicious Small Cakes
Yolks of 6 eggs. 1 light pound flour. 1/4 pound butter. 1 spoonful lard. 1 pound sugar.
These cakes are better without soda and of the consistency of Shrewsbury cakes. Beat the whites of three eggs to a strong froth; weigh one pound of the best "A" sugar, put it in a tin can with three wine-glasses of water. Let it boil slowly, till it begins to rope, or rather, when a little of it will cool on a plate, like it would begin to candy. Then pour the boiling sugar gradually to the white of egg; beat it well till it begins to thicken and to cool somewhat, then beat into the icing two tablespoonfuls of powdered cinnamon, and ice over the little cakes, using a stiff feather for the purpose. You can add the other unbeaten whites of eggs, with an addition of sugar, to make more small cakes.--Mrs. M. C. C.
Two recipes in one entry: a stiff, butter-and-yolk cookie dough in the manner of Shrewsbury cakes, and a boiled cinnamon icing to spread over them. The dough is given as a bare ingredient list, so the method has to be inferred; the icing is described in full.
- The hinge: the syrup stage"till it begins to rope" and "like it would begin to candy" point to a firm thread or soft-ball syrup, somewhere around 235-240F on a thermometer. Under-boiled syrup gives an icing that never sets; boiled much further it stiffens and can turn grainy before you can spread it.
- A light pound of flourA "light pound" is a scant pound, slightly under 16 oz -- call it roughly 3 1/2 cups of modern all-purpose. With a pound of sugar and only about 4 1/2 oz of fat and six yolks for moisture, the dough will be crumbly and is best pressed together, rolled thin and cut, not dropped.
- Wine-glasses and spoonfulsA wine-glass is usually reckoned at about 2 fluid ounces in cookbooks of this period, so three would be about 3/4 cup of water for the syrup. A "spoonful" of lard is probably a tablespoon; the small amount alongside the butter can be replaced with more butter or shortening.
- Best "A" sugarLetter grades were used for refined sugars, "A" denoting a high grade of white sugar; loaf sugar was a separate form. Ordinary granulated sugar is a reasonable equivalent and needs no substitution.
- No soda, and whyThe note that the cakes are better without soda is deliberate: these are meant to be dense, short and crisp like a Shrewsbury cake, not risen. Adding baking powder produces a soft cookie and a different sweet altogether.
- OvenNo temperature is given. Thin butter cookies of this type bake at 350F for roughly 10-12 minutes, until the edges just colour; the high sugar content means they darken quickly at the rim.
- The featherA stiff quill was the standard icing brush before pastry brushes were sold. A small offset spatula or a silicone brush does the same work; the icing sets fast, so ice in small batches and keep the bowl warm over hot water.
- Egg whites and the syrupThis is an Italian meringue -- three whites take the full pound of sugar as boiling syrup, which partly cooks them as it is beaten in. Pour in a thin steady stream at the side of the bowl, not into the middle, or the syrup seizes into threads.
- YieldA pound of flour makes roughly five to six dozen small thin cakes. The icing quantity is generous; the closing line about using the remaining unbeaten whites with more sugar is a suggestion to make a second batch of dough rather than waste them.
Shrewsbury cakes, the benchmark the writer reaches for, are an English shortcake of flour, butter, sugar and egg, recorded by name in seventeenth-century English cookery and still made in Shropshire; Virginia cooks kept the name and the texture long after the town connection had faded. The boiled icing here is a domestic forerunner of what later books call seven-minute or Italian meringue frosting. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878), edited by Marion Cabell Tyree, gathered contributions from ladies of Virginia and her sister states and credited them by initials, as here with Mrs. M. C. C.; the entries read as one cook talking to another, which is why the dough arrives as a list of weights with no method attached. The feather brush is a period detail: quills were kitchen tools, used for icing and greasing pans, until manufactured pastry brushes became cheap.