Orange Cake
Bake sponge cake in jelly-cake pans, three for each cake. Spread an icing between the cakes, made of whites of three eggs, beaten very light, and one and one-quarter pounds powdered sugar.
The rind and juice of one large, or two small oranges. The rind and juice of one-half lemon; the other half to be used for the cake.--Mrs. P. McG.
Orange Cake. 8 eggs. 1 1/2 pounds sugar. 1 1/2 pounds flour. 3/4 pound butter. 1 pint milk. 2 teaspoonfuls cream tartar. 1 teaspoonful soda.
Beat the eggs very light, and mix in the sugar and creamed butter. Pour in half the milk, and dissolve the cream tartar and soda in the other half. Add the sifted flour as quickly as possible after the foaming milk is poured in. Bake in jellycake pans.
Take six oranges, grate the peel and squeeze the juice with two pounds pulverized sugar. If you use sweet oranges, add the juice of two lemons. After stirring to a smooth paste, spread between the layers of the cake. Ice, or sprinkle over sugar the last layer on top of the cake.--Mrs. J. C. W. Orange Cake.
First make a sponge cake with twelve eggs, the weight of twelve eggs in sugar, and weight of ten in flour. Then make an icing of the whites of two eggs, the juice of one lemon, and the juice and grated rind of two oranges; add sufficient powdered sugar to make the proper consistency for icing--then put between each cake, and on top of the whole cake.--Mrs. C. B.
Three contributors' versions of the same idea: thin sponge or butter layers baked in shallow pans and stacked with an orange-sugar filling. All three are sized for a large household and assume you will weigh rather than measure.
- Jelly-cake pansThese are shallow round tins, roughly 8 to 9 inches across, used for thin single layers baked in 12 to 18 minutes. Modern 9-inch cake pans work; fill them only about a third full so the layers stay thin enough to stack three or four high.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because these cakes went into a wood range judged by hand. Bake the butter cake at 350F and the sponges at 350F as well, checking the thin layers early.
- Weights to volumesIn Mrs. J. C. W.'s cake, 1 1/2 lb sugar is about 3 1/3 cups, 1 1/2 lb flour about 5 1/2 cups, and 3/4 lb butter is three sticks. It is an enormous batter, five or six layers' worth; halving it gives a normal cake.
- "Weight of twelve eggs in sugar"Mrs. C. B.'s sponge is a weight-of-eggs formula: weigh the eggs and match that weight in sugar, then use the weight of ten in flour. The recipe does not say whether the eggs are weighed in or out of the shell, and period books did it both ways. Twelve large eggs run about 1 1/4 lb out of the shell and about 1 1/2 lb in it, so expect sugar somewhere in that range and a little less flour.
- Cream of tartar and sodaTwo teaspoons cream of tartar with one of soda is baking powder mixed at home, in about the usual 2:1 proportion. The soda-and-cream-tartar milk begins working the instant it is combined, which is why the instruction says to add the sifted flour "as quickly as possible" and get the pans into the oven at once.
- The filling is mostly sugarSix oranges beaten with two pounds of pulverized sugar makes a stiff sweet paste, not a curd. The recipe assumes the oranges may or may not be sweet, and calls for two lemons if they are. Cut the sugar substantially and taste as you go, or the filling will overwhelm the cake.
- Uncooked egg-white icingMrs. P. McG.'s and Mrs. C. B.'s icings are raw whites beaten with powdered sugar and citrus juice. If serving anyone elderly, pregnant, very young or immune-compromised, use pasteurized whites or meringue powder, which behave the same way.
- YieldEach version makes one tall layer cake serving 12 to 16, with the butter-cake batter easily stretching to two cakes.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1877, is a collection of contributed household recipes, which is why the same dish appears three times over three sets of initials: the book preserves whichever version each contributor actually made, drawn from Virginia and neighbouring states. Orange cake in this form belongs to the era when the shallow stacked "jelly cake" was a common American party cake and when chemical leavening, here still mixed at home from cream of tartar and soda rather than bought as baking powder, made a reliable layer possible without hours of beating. Citrus was a purchased item rather than a garden one in the upland South, which fits the lavish hand with peel and juice and the note that sweet oranges need lemon added back for sharpness. The weight-of-eggs sponge in the third version is much older than the book, a European formula long used to build a cake before standardized cup measures took hold.