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Extra Sponge Cake
Whites of 14 eggs. Yolks of only 7.
One pound best white sugar stirred in the yolks after they are well beaten. Add the whites, and lastly stir in very lightly half a pound of sifted flour. Beat very little after putting in the flour. Bake quickly.--Mrs. D. C. K.
A foam cake with no chemical leavening and no fat: everything depends on the air beaten into the eggs and on not knocking it out again. The two sentences at the end of the original are the whole technique.
- The hinge: fold, don't beat"Beat very little after putting in the flour" is the instruction that decides whether this works. Sift the flour over the batter in two or three additions and fold with a spatula until just no streaks remain; overworking deflates the whites and gives a dense, rubbery layer at the base.
- Weights, not cupsOne pound of sugar is about 2 1/4 cups granulated; half a pound of sifted flour is roughly 2 cups of cake flour or 1 3/4 cups all-purpose, spooned and levelled. Weigh if you can, since the flour-to-egg ratio is the only structure the cake has.
- Egg sizeEgg sizes were not standardised in the 1870s and may have run somewhat smaller than today's large. By modern large eggs, fourteen whites is about 1 3/4 cups (14 oz) and seven yolks about 1/2 cup (4 oz); measure by volume rather than counting shells.
- "Bake quickly" needs translatingIn a wood range this meant getting the cake set before the foam collapsed, not searing it. In a modern oven 350F works for a tube pan; 375F suits shallower layers. Too hot an oven will crust the top before the centre sets.
- Sugar into yolksA pound of sugar beaten into only seven yolks is stiff going. Beat the yolks first until pale and thick, then add the sugar gradually and work it until it is as thick and pale as this much sugar will allow.
- No pan is namedUse an ungreased 10-inch tube pan, which lets the batter climb the sides. Bake 40-50 minutes, until the top springs back, then invert the pan and cool the cake upside down before releasing it.
- FlavouringThe recipe gives none. A teaspoon of vanilla, or the grated zest of a lemon rubbed into the sugar, would not be out of keeping with sponge cakes of the period.
- YieldAbout a 10-inch cake serving 12 to 16. It stales quickly without fat; it is best the day it is baked, and stale slices toast well or go into trifle.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions credited to Virginia housewives, often only by initials as here, contains a number of sponge cakes, and "extra" here appears to signal richness of eggs rather than any added ingredient: fourteen whites to half a pound of flour is a lavish ratio for a household beating them by hand. Sponge cakes of this type descend from the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English biscuit and Savoy cake tradition, in which eggs alone did the lifting, and they remained a marker of skill well into the era of chemical leavening because there was nothing to hide behind. The white-heavy arithmetic may also reflect thrift: recipes that used yolks heavily, such as boiled custards, left cooks with whites to spend.