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Jelly Cake (Beat eggs very light Cream)
Beat 8 eggs very light. Cream 1/2 pound butter. 3/4 pound flour. 3/4 pound sugar well beaten. 1 teaspoonful tartaric acid. 1 teaspoonful of soda. Stir these in when ready to bake. Bake in thin pans, and put on jelly while warm.--Mrs. J. L.
A pound-cake batter lightened with an acid-and-soda pair and baked in thin layers, then filled with jelly. The instructions assume a cook who already knows what a jelly cake looks like, so the gaps are in assembly rather than technique.
- Weigh, don't scoop3/4 pound flour is about 12 oz, near 2 3/4 cups spooned and levelled; 3/4 pound sugar is 12 oz, about 1 2/3 cups; 1/2 pound butter is two sticks. The proportions are close enough to a pound cake that volume guesswork will throw the batter off.
- The hinge: leaven last"Stir these in when ready to bake" is the whole trick. Tartaric acid and soda react on contact in a wet batter and are largely spent within minutes, so mix them in only when the pans are greased and the oven is hot, then get the layers in immediately.
- Tartaric acidStill sold as a food-grade powder in baking and winemaking supply. It is usually reckoned about twice as strong an acid as cream of tartar by weight, so a teaspoon of tartaric acid with a teaspoon of soda makes a brisk, fast-acting pair; about 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar is the nearest common substitute.
- OvenThin layers want a moderate to moderately hot oven, 350-375F, for 12 to 18 minutes depending on thickness. They are done when the edges pull from the pan and the centre springs back; a thin layer overbakes into a biscuit very quickly.
- Pans"Thin pans" most likely means shallow tins that give thin layers. This quantity of batter should make four to five thin layers, or three ordinary ones. Line the bottoms with parchment; a batter this rich sticks.
- No liquid, no salt, no flavouringThere is no milk in the batter at all, and eight eggs are doing all the moistening. A half teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of vanilla or a grating of lemon zest are period-appropriate additions, though the recipe calls for neither.
- Filling while warmJelly spreads thinly over a warm layer and soaks in slightly, which is the point. Use a firm, tart preserve, currant or quince traditionally, and beat it smooth first. Stack and press gently; such cakes were commonly served plain, without icing.
- YieldAbout 12 to 16 servings.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by some 250 Virginia housekeepers, is the sort of book in which a recipe arrives signed only with initials, as this one does. Jelly cake was ubiquitous in nineteenth-century American household books, North and South: a plain, well-buttered batter baked in shallow tins and stacked with whatever jelly the pantry held, at a time when a jar of currant or quince jelly represented real domestic labour and was worth showing off. Its spread is generally traced to the wider availability of cast-iron cookstoves with usable ovens and of cheap stamped tin layer pans, which together made thin, evenly baked rounds practical in a home kitchen. The tartaric acid and soda are a reminder that chemical leavening at this date was often bought as two separate powders and combined by the cook; commercial baking powder existed but had not yet displaced the older habit of keeping the acid and the alkali in separate tins.