Lemon Cake
1 cupful butter. 3 cupfuls white sugar. 5 eggs beaten separately. Cream butter and sugar together. 1 teaspoonful soda. 1 cup milk. The juice and grated rind of one lemon. 5 small teacupfuls flour. Bake in small or shallow tins.--Mrs. C.
Lemon Cake.
One cupful of butter, three cupfuls of white sugar, rubbed to a cream. Stir in the yolks of five eggs well beaten, and one teaspoonful of soda dissolved in a cupful of milk; add the whites, and sift in as lightly as possible four cupfuls of flour. Add the juice and grated peel of one lemon.--Mrs. Dr. S. "ROBERT E. LEE" CAKE.
Twelve eggs, their full weight in sugar, a half-weight in flour. Bake it in pans the thickness of jelly cakes. Take two pounds of nice "A" sugar, squeeze into it the juice of five oranges and three lemons together with the pulp; stir it in the sugar until perfectly smooth; then spread it on the cakes, as you would do jelly, putting one above another till the whole of the sugar is used up. Spread a layer of it on top and on sides.--Mrs. G. "GEN. ROBERT LEE" CAKE. 10 eggs. 1 pound sugar. 1/2 pound flour. Rind of 1 lemon, and juice of 1/2 lemon.
Make exactly like sponge cake, and bake in jelly-cake tins. Then take the whites of two eggs beat to a froth, and add one pound sugar, the grated rind and juice of one orange, or juice of half a lemon. Spread it on the cakes before they are perfectly cold, and place one layer on another. This quantity makes two cakes.--Mrs. I. II.
Four related recipes: two butter-based lemon cakes and two versions of the citrus sponge layer cake that Virginia cooks named for Robert E. Lee. All of them assume a cook who knows how to read a batter, so the instructions are thin.
- Cupful versus teacupfulMrs. C. calls for "5 small teacupfuls flour" while Mrs. Dr. S., working from the same butter-and-sugar base, says four cupfuls. A 19th-century teacup ran smaller than a modern cup, roughly 5 to 6 fl oz, so the two are close in intent. Treat 4 cups (about 500 g) of all-purpose flour as the working figure and add more only if the batter will not hold a ribbon.
- Soda without enough acidSoda and acid -- one teaspoon of soda in a cup of sweet milk with a single lemon's juice may leave some soda unneutralized; surplus soda gives a soapy taste and a faintly yellow crumb. Buttermilk in place of the sweet milk, or 2 teaspoons baking powder with the soda omitted, avoids the risk.
- OvenThese predate reliable thermostats. Bake the butter cakes at 350F; the sponge layers, which are thin, want 350F for 12 to 15 minutes, until the surface springs back.
- "Jelly-cake tins" and "shallow tins"Round tins about 8 to 9 inches across with low sides, filled to well under half an inch of batter. Modern 8-inch round pans work; line the bottoms with parchment, since these batters are eggy and stick.
- Twelve eggs by weightMrs. G.'s proportion is the classic sponge formula. Twelve large eggs weigh roughly 1 lb 5 oz (600 g) out of the shell, so about that much sugar and half as much flour, near 10 oz (300 g). Mrs. I. II.'s version, at 10 eggs to 1 lb sugar and 1/2 lb flour, is the same proportion stated in round numbers.
- "A" sugarA letter grade of refined white sugar sold in the period; the grades covered several textures, but it was refined, not raw. Ordinary granulated sugar is the substitute; for the citrus filling, which is meant to dissolve into a spreadable paste, sifted confectioners' sugar behaves far better and is what the texture is aiming at.
- Raw whites in the icingMrs. I. II.'s filling is two egg whites beaten to a froth with a pound of sugar, never cooked. Use pasteurized whites or meringue powder if the cake is for anyone elderly, pregnant or immune-compromised.
- Spread while warmMrs. I. II. directs that the citrus-sugar filling be spread before the layers are perfectly cold, so it soaks in rather than sitting on top. Mrs. G. gives no such instruction.
- YieldMrs. I. II. states plainly that her quantity makes two cakes. The butter cakes are directed into small or shallow tins, so one large or two shallow cakes.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree, drew on contributions credited to some two hundred and fifty Virginia housekeepers, many identified only by an initial, which is why this page reads as a small committee of Mrs. C., Mrs. Dr. S., Mrs. G. and Mrs. I. II. all offering their lemon cake at once. The two "Robert E. Lee" cakes here are among the earlier printed versions of a dessert that became a fixture of Southern cookbooks: a fatless sponge baked in thin sheets and stacked with an uncooked orange-and-lemon sugar filling. The connection to Lee himself is traditional rather than documented; the cake is generally said to have been a favorite of his, and the name is attached in Virginia domestic writing within a decade or so of his death in 1870. What the recipe actually records is a technique older than its name: the citrus layer cake built on beaten eggs, weighed against their own weight in sugar.