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Mountain Cocoanut Cake
Cream together one pound sugar, half a pound butter. Beat eight eggs lightly without separating. Stir them gradually into the butter and sugar. Sift in one pound of flour, beat all light, then put in an even teaspoonful of soda dissolved in half a teacupful of sweet milk, two even teaspoonfuls cream of tartar dissolved in the same quantity of milk. Season with lemon or vanilla. For the icing, nine tablespoonfuls of water and one pound sugar; boil until it glistens. Beat the whites of four eggs to a stiff froth, stir into the boiling icing, then add half a pound of grated cocoanut. Spread the icing between the cakes and on the top.--Miss S.
A pound-cake batter raised with soda and cream of tartar, split into layers and joined with a boiled coconut icing. The original gives no pan size, temperature or time, so those are the gaps to fill.
- Scale and panA pound each of sugar and flour with eight eggs is a large batter, roughly four 9-inch layers or two deep ones split after baking. Expect 16 to 20 servings; halve everything for an ordinary cake.
- OvenBake layers at 350F for 25 to 30 minutes, until the centre springs back. Deep pans of this rich a batter need 45 to 55 minutes and a lower shelf.
- TeacupfulA teacupful was generally reckoned smaller than a modern measuring cup, commonly about 3/4 cup, which would make half a teacupful roughly 6 tablespoons; the book itself does not define it. The milk here is only a solvent for the leavening; a little more or less will not hurt.
- Soda and cream of tartarOne teaspoon soda with two of cream of tartar is homemade baking powder in the pre-packaged style, and the two are dissolved separately here so that they meet only in the batter. Get the cake into the oven promptly, since this pairing reacts all at once and does not hold. Substituting about 4 teaspoons of commercial baking powder gives comparable lift with more margin.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh unsoured milk, specified because sour milk and buttermilk were equally common in the kitchen and would change how the soda behaves.
- Boil until it glistensThe syrup of sugar and water is at the right point at about 238 to 240F on a thermometer, the soft-ball stage, when the surface takes on a sheen. Undercooked syrup makes an icing that never sets.
- Building the icingPouring the hot syrup into the beaten whites in a steady stream while beating is easier to control than stirring whites into a hot pan, and gives the same result. Fold the coconut in at the end and spread while the icing is still warm and pourable.
- CoconutHalf a pound of grated coconut means fresh meat from the nut, unsweetened and moist. Packaged sweetened flake is much drier and sweeter; unsweetened frozen grated coconut is the closest stand-in.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1878, was assembled from contributions by named and half-named Virginia housekeepers, which is why this one closes with "Miss S." rather than a byline. The name "mountain cake" is usually taken to refer to the height of a tall stack of thin layers, though the usage is not securely documented. Coconut was a showy and costly filling: whole nuts arrived by ship from the tropics, and grating one was an afternoon's work rather than an ingredient off a shelf. The separate solutions of soda and cream of tartar place the recipe in the decades when cooks mixed their own leavening from two jars, a habit that persisted in home receipts well after commercial baking powders came on the market.