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Gloucester Cakes
5 eggs. 1 quart of milk. 1 quart of flour. A piece of butter the size of an egg.
Beat the eggs very light; mix into them the flour and milk alternately, and beating it until perfectly smooth, add a little salt. Melt the butter and stir it into the batter. Bake in small moulds.--Mrs. J. D.
An unleavened batter bread of the popover family: the lift comes entirely from steam and beaten egg, which means the batter must be thin, the moulds hot, and the oven high. The original gives no temperature or time, so those are the gaps to fill.
- The hinge: a hot oven and hot mouldsWith no soda, powder or yeast, these rise only on steam. Heat the greased moulds in the oven until the fat shimmers, pour the batter in, and bake hot — around 425F for 20 minutes, then 350F for another 10 to 15 to set the walls. Opening the door early collapses them.
- A quart of flourRoughly 4 cups, about 16 oz of the soft Southern wheat this book assumes. Modern all-purpose flour is stronger; measure by weight at 16 oz and expect a slightly chewier crumb, or use a soft-wheat flour such as White Lily for the original texture.
- Butter the size of an eggAbout 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons. Melt and cool it slightly before stirring in so it does not cook the beaten eggs.
- "Beat the eggs very light"Whites and yolks together, beaten until pale, thick and foamy — several minutes by hand, a minute or two in a stand mixer. This is the only aeration the batter gets before the oven.
- Batter consistencyEqual volumes of milk and flour plus five eggs gives something close to heavy cream. It should pour, not drop. Rest it 30 minutes if convenient; the flour hydrates and the cakes rise taller.
- "Small moulds"Probably cast-iron gem pans or small tin moulds, the usual small bakeware of the period; the recipe does not specify. Standard muffin tins work, and popover pans work better because the tall narrow cups encourage the climb. Fill about two-thirds.
- Yield and servingRoughly 20 to 24 in standard muffin cups. Serve straight from the oven with butter — they deflate and toughen within minutes of cooling, and they do not reheat well.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1878, is a collection of contributed receipts, each signed with initials or a place name, and the dishes often carry the name of the county or family they came from — Gloucester County sits on the Chesapeake side of the Virginia tidewater. The cake itself belongs to the large family of American batter breads often associated with Yorkshire pudding, though the lineage is traditional rather than documented: flour, milk and well-beaten eggs baked hot in small iron moulds, with no chemical leavening at all. Cast-iron gem pans were common enough in kitchens of the period that recipes of this kind seem to assume them without explanation. The absence of any oven instruction is characteristic; a cook working a wood range judged heat by hand and flour-scorch, and a printed temperature would have meant nothing to her.