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Marguerites, or Jelly Cakes
Rub together one pound sugar, one pound of butter, till perfectly light. Beat six eggs till very thick, leaving out the whites. Sift one and a half pound of flour into the eggs, butter, and sugar, one teaspoonful of mixed spices (cinnamon, mace, and nutmeg), and half a glass of rose water. Stir the whole well, and roll it on the paste-board about one-quarter inch thick. Then cut out the cakes and bake them a few minutes. When cold, spread the surface of each cake with peach jam or any marmalade. Beat the whites of four eggs very light, and add enough powdered sugar to make them as thick as icing. Flavor it with lemon or rose water and with a spoon put it on each cake, high in the centre. Put the cakes in the oven, and as soon as they are of a pale brown take them out.--Mrs. I.H.
A rich rolled cookie, jam-filled and meringue-capped, baked twice. The scale is Victorian — a pound of butter, a pound of sugar and a pound and a half of flour will give you five to six dozen cakes, so halving is sensible.
- The hinge: chill the doughEqual weights of butter and sugar creamed light make a dough far too soft to roll straight away. Wrap and refrigerate an hour, then roll a quarter of it at a time on a floured board to the specified quarter inch.
- Yolks only"Beat six eggs till very thick, leaving out the whites" means six yolks. Four of the reserved whites go into the meringue; the other two can be kept for something else.
- Half a glass of rose waterA wine glass of the period held about 2 fl oz, so half a glass is roughly 2 tablespoons. Modern rose water varies greatly in strength — start with 1 tablespoon and taste the dough.
- Mixed spicesOne teaspoon total of cinnamon, mace and nutmeg combined, not one of each. Grate the nutmeg fresh; blade mace is worth buying whole and grinding, as the pre-ground kind fades quickly.
- Oven temperaturesThe book assumes a cook who reads her own oven. Bake the plain cakes at 375F for 7-9 minutes, until barely coloured at the edges — "a few minutes" is literal, and these overbake fast.
- The meringueFour whites will take about a cup of sifted powdered sugar to reach icing stiffness. Return the topped cakes to a cooler oven, around 300-325F, for 8-10 minutes; at full baking heat the peaks brown before they set.
- Jam and assemblyPeach jam is the first filling the recipe names, though it allows any marmalade. Spread thinly -- a heavy layer will boil out from under the meringue and glue the cakes to the sheet.
- KeepingBest the day they are made. Meringue draws moisture from jam and air alike, and by the second day the tops go tacky.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from recipes contributed by Virginia housekeepers; contributors are credited variously, some by name and some, as here, only by initials. The name marguerite is French for daisy, and the finished cake — a pale round with a white peak raised in the centre — was presumably meant to suggest one; the word also carries the older sense of a pearl. By the turn of the century American cookbooks used "marguerites" for a much thriftier thing, a cracker spread with meringue and nuts, but this earlier version belongs to the tradition of rolled spice cookies sandwiched or capped with preserves. The rose water is the tell of an older palate: it was a common cake flavouring in English and colonial American baking long before vanilla extract became cheap and plentiful, and it appears to have persisted in Southern receipt books longer than elsewhere.