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Molasses Pound Cake
1/2 pound butter. 2 cupfuls sugar. 2 cupfuls molasses. 6 cupfuls flour. 1 cupful cream. 4 eggs. Some cloves and nutmeg; add lemon to taste. --Mrs. Dr. S.
A terse contributor's list of the kind that fills Housekeeping in Old Virginia — no method, no oven, no leavening. Everything below fills those gaps.
- The missing leaveningThe recipe names none. Many molasses cakes of the period used saleratus (baking soda) with the molasses, roughly a teaspoon per cupful, the soda neutralizing the acid and giving lift; that ratio is a common rule of thumb rather than a fixed rule. With six cups of flour and only four eggs the cake as written will be dense. If you want lift, try about 2 teaspoons of baking soda dissolved in the molasses, understanding this is an editorial addition.
- Half a pound of butterThat is 2 sticks, 8 oz, 225 g. Have it properly softened — the whole structure of a pound cake depends on creaming butter and sugar long enough to hold air, five to eight minutes with a mixer.
- CupfulsPeriod cupfuls varied from kitchen to kitchen, but a half-pint measure is the usual assumption and is workable here. Flour was scooped rather than spooned and leveled, so measure generously: 6 cups is roughly 30 oz / 850 g.
- MolassesPeriod molasses was generally darker and less refined in flavour than the mild unsulphured baking molasses sold now, though how it was processed varied. Do not substitute blackstrap, which is aggressively bitter in this quantity; ordinary dark molasses is the right register.
- CreamThe cream would have been unhomogenized, and may sometimes have been a little soured. Heavy cream works; buttermilk or soured cream gives a tangier crumb and, if you have added soda, reacts with it.
- OvenThe recipe gives no oven direction. A heavy, molasses-rich batter of this size is best baked moderately low, around 325F. Note the volume: these quantities make roughly 2.5 kg of batter, more than one 10-inch tube pan or two loaf pans will take, so divide between several pans, filling each no more than two-thirds, and bake until a skewer comes out clean — over an hour for a large pan, less for loaves. Molasses browns fast, so tent with foil if the top darkens early.
- Spicing and lemonFor this volume of batter, start at 1 teaspoon ground cloves and 1 whole nutmeg grated, plus the zest of one lemon and a tablespoon of its juice. "To taste" is easier to judge if you taste the batter before the soda goes in.
- Yield and keepingA very large quantity — well over twenty slices, or two cakes. Like other molasses cakes it improves after a day or two wrapped tightly; the crumb moistens and the spice settles.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree, gathered contributions from Virginia housekeepers and printed them largely as submitted — which is why "Mrs. Dr. S." gives quantities and nothing else. These were notes among women who already knew how a pound cake was made, and the assumed knowledge is exactly what has been lost. The cake itself belongs to a large Southern family of molasses baking: molasses was cheaper and more reliably available than refined sugar through much of the nineteenth century, and even in a recipe that also calls for two cups of sugar it carries the flavor. The name "pound cake" by this date had loosened from its original formula of a pound each of butter, sugar, eggs and flour, and had come to mean simply a rich, densely creamed butter cake — often baked, as here, with cloves, nutmeg and lemon standing in for the vanilla a modern baker would reach for.