Gold Cake
1 pound flour. 1 pound sugar. 3/4 pound butter. Yolks of 11 eggs. Grated rind of an orange. Juice of 2 lemons. 1 teaspoonful soda. Cream the butter well, rub into it the flour. Beat the yolks well, put in the sugar, and beat again; add the orange rind and lemon juice. Mix all together, and beat for ten minutes. Last of all, sift in the soda, stirring it in well. Requires two hours to bake in one pound cake-mould. Flavor the icing with lemon-Mrs. S. T.
A pound-cake formula built on egg yolks alone, with lemon juice standing in as the acid for the soda. It is a stiff, heavy batter by design and needs a long, gentle bake.
- The weights in cups1 lb flour is about 3 1/2 to 4 cups sifted; 1 lb granulated sugar is about 2 1/4 cups; 3/4 lb butter is three sticks. Weighing is far more reliable here, since the whole balance of the cake depends on it.
- Eleven yolksModern large eggs give yolks of roughly 18 g each, so 11 yolks is about 200 g, or roughly 3/4 cup. Eggs of the period are often said to have run smaller, so if yours are small you may want a twelfth yolk. Save the whites for a silver cake or meringue.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no oven instruction beyond the two-hour bake, which implies a low, steady heat. Bake at 300-325F. Two hours at that heat is realistic for a full pound-cake mould; test with a skewer at 90 minutes.
- The mouldA "one pound cake-mould" appears to mean simply a mould for pound cake; the shape is not specified. A deep tube or turk's-head mould suits a dense batter like this because heat reaches the centre, and a 10-inch tube pan will hold the quantity. In a solid deep pan watch the outside, which may colour well before the middle sets.
- Soda and acidThe teaspoon of soda is neutralized by the juice of two lemons; there is no other leavening and no baking powder. Sift the soda in at the very end as directed and get the cake into the oven promptly, since the lift begins immediately.
- Rubbing flour into butterThe instruction is deliberate, not a misprint. Working the flour into the creamed butter first coats the starch in fat and keeps this eggy batter tender despite ten minutes of beating.
- LiquidLemon juice is the only liquid beyond the yolks, so expect a very thick batter closer to a paste than a pourable one. Spread it into the mould rather than pouring.
- YieldAbout 3 lb of cake, or 16 to 20 slices. It keeps well wrapped for several days and slices better on the second day.
Gold cake and silver cake were a matched pair in American household cookery, most visible in cookbooks of the 1870s and 1880s, a practical answer to the problem of leftover eggs: silver cake used the whites, gold cake the yolks, and a thrifty kitchen made both in one afternoon. The pairing spread widely, and it survived in community cookbooks well into the twentieth century. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by some 250 Virginia housewives, is full of such attributed recipes — the "Mrs. S. T." signature is the book's characteristic form, crediting a neighbor rather than a professional cook. The reliance on pound weights rather than cups marks it as older practice, from a time when kitchen scales were more trusted than the varying sizes of household cups.