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Jelly Cake (Eggs The weight of in flour)
8 eggs. The weight of 4 in flour. The weight of 6 in sugar. To be baked in flat tins. For the jelly: one-quarter pound butter, one-half pound sugar, yolks of three eggs, juice and grated rind of one lemon. To be put in a saucepan and allowed to come to a boil. Then the three whites, beaten to a stiff froth, must be stirred in and the saucepan returned to the fire until it boils up. Spread between layers of cake.--Mrs. E. C. G.
A weight-proportioned sponge cake with a lemon curd filling, written for a cook who owned a balance scale and no measuring cups. The proportions are sound; the filling instructions are the part to treat with suspicion.
- Weighing the eggsNineteenth-century recipes generally weigh eggs whole, in the shell. A modern large egg runs about 2 oz, so the weight of 4 eggs is roughly 8 oz flour (about 1 3/4 cups, spooned and levelled) and the weight of 6 eggs about 12 oz sugar (roughly 1 3/4 cups). Weighing your own eggs is more faithful and takes a moment.
- No leavening at allThere is no soda, no baking powder, no liquid. All the lift comes from air beaten into the eggs, so this is a genoise-style sponge: beat the whole eggs with the sugar until pale and tripled in volume, then sift and fold in the flour in three additions. Overmixing at the flour stage is what produces a flat, rubbery layer.
- "Flat tins"The recipe does not say how many or what size. Shallow round pans, greased and floured, with the batter no more than about half an inch deep, will suit; expect at least four or five layers from this quantity. Thin layers of this sort bake quickly and need no splitting.
- OvenThe recipe gives no oven direction. For thin layers of this kind, around 350F for 12 to 18 minutes depending on depth is a reasonable modern equivalent. The layers are done when the centre springs back and the edges just begin to pull from the tin.
- The filling must not truly boilThe filling and the boil -- This is a lemon curd, and taking it to a hard boil risks curdling the yolks. Cook the butter, sugar, yolks, juice and rind over low heat or a water bath, stirring constantly, until it thickens and coats the spoon at about 170F. The second heating after the whites go in should be gentler still; take it just to the point where it thickens again, then off the heat.
- Grated rindZest only the coloured outer layer; the white pith under it is bitter and there is a great deal of it in a single lemon. Rub the zest into the sugar before cooking to draw out more of the oil.
- Assembly and yieldSpread the warm curd between fully cooled layers; a warm sponge will absorb it and go soggy. Three layers gives a cake serving 10 to 12. The filling keeps a few days refrigerated but the assembled cake is best the day it is made.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by some 250 Virginia housekeepers, is full of recipes signed with initials like this one, which is why the book reads as a community archive rather than a single author's system. "Jelly cake" in nineteenth-century American cookbooks did not necessarily mean a cake made with fruit jelly, though many were: the word covered almost any soft sweet filling spread between thin baked layers, curd and boiled custard included, and the recipes are the ancestors of the modern layer cake. The weight-of-the-eggs formula is older still, a way of holding proportions steady in kitchens where eggs varied in size through the year and no one owned a standardised cup.