Pound Cake
1 pound butter. 1 pound flour. 1 pound sugar. 16 eggs, yolks of 4. After the butter is creamed, work the sugar and butter well before mixing.--Mrs. M. S. C.
Pound Cake. 1 pound sugar. 1 pound butter. 1 pound of flour. 12 eggs. Cream the butter; rub into it gradually the sifted and dried flour. Beat the yolks of ten eggs very light, then add the powdered sugar, beat again, add a wine-glass of brandy or one of good whiskey flavored with nutmeg, or the grated rind of a lemon; mix all together. Stir in the whites of twelve eggs beaten to a stiff froth, just before baking. It will take two hours to bake.--Mrs. S. T.
Pound Cake. 1 pound flour. 1 pound of sugar. 3/4 pound of butter. 10 eggs. Cream the butter well with flour; beat the yolks well, and add, by degrees, the butter and flour, and then the whites beaten to a stiff forth. Season with mace and one glass of wine. Bake in cups well greased. For fruit cake add to above, two pounds of raisins, two pounds of currants, one half a pound of citron, stirred in by degrees. Add nutmeg and cinnamon to the seasoning. One pound of butter, and one dozen eggs for fruit cake.--Mrs. A. C. Pound Cake.
Beat the whites of twelve eggs to a stiff froth. The yolks beat until they look light and white; then beat in one pound of sugar; next add the whites; cream the light pound of butter until it looks frothy; then sift in by degrees one pound of flour and cream them together, and add the other mixture. Put a little powdered mace, if you like, a wine-glass of wine, and the same of brandy.--Mrs. W.
Four contributors, four versions of the same cake: a pound each of butter, sugar and flour, with eggs doing all the lifting. Nothing here is difficult, but the proportions and the vocabulary need translating before you commit two dozen eggs to it.
- Scale it downA full pound of each ingredient plus ten to sixteen eggs gives roughly 4-5 lb of batter, enough for two large loaf pans or one very big tube pan. Halving or quartering the recipe works perfectly well since the ratio, not the quantity, is the point.
- The ambiguous first versionMrs. M. S. C.'s "16 eggs, yolks of 4" is genuinely unclear as printed. The most likely reading is sixteen whites and only four yolks, which would give a pale, light cake; a reading of sixteen whole eggs plus four extra yolks is also possible. Follow one of the other three versions if you want a proportion you can trust.
- A wine-glassAbout two fluid ounces, or a quarter cup. That much brandy, whiskey or wine in a pound of flour is a flavouring, not enough to affect the crumb.
- Powdered sugarIn this period the term means finely ground granulated sugar, not modern confectioners' sugar with its cornstarch. Use ordinary granulated, or caster sugar if you have it.
- Dried flourMrs. S. T.'s "sifted and dried flour" refers to warming flour to drive off damp before use. Modern bagged flour needs only sifting.
- No leavening, so the beating is everythingThere is no baking powder or soda in any of these. The entire rise comes from air beaten into the creamed butter and the whipped whites, so cream until visibly pale and frothy and fold the whites in gently at the last moment, exactly as Mrs. S. T. directs.
- Oven temperatureNone of these gives a temperature; a moderate oven of about 325F suits a cake of this mass. The two hours Mrs. S. T. allows fits a full-sized pound cake, but test with a skewer from 90 minutes on, and tent with foil if the top colours early.
- Baked in cupsMrs. A. C.'s greased cups are individual moulds or teacups; muffin tins are the modern equivalent, and they will be done in 20-25 minutes rather than two hours.
- The fruit-cake variantAdding four and a half pounds of fruit roughly doubles the batter's weight and it will need a deeper pan, a lower oven near 300F, and considerably longer. Toss the raisins and currants in a little of the measured flour so they do not sink.
- Butter and saltButter in this period was often salted for keeping, and its salt content varied. None of these recipes calls for salt, so with unsalted butter you may want about a teaspoon per pound of flour.
Pound cake takes its name from the formula rather than from any place: a pound each of butter, sugar, flour and eggs, a proportion easy to remember. That memorability helps explain its long survival in English and American kitchens, and why Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878) can print four versions in a row, each submitted by a different contributor and identified only by initials. The book was assembled by Marion Cabell Tyree from recipes gathered among Virginia housekeepers, and this cluster shows how the collection worked: the same dish, recorded as several households made it, with the variations left in. The differences are the interesting part. One cook drops to three-quarters of a pound of butter, one flavours with brandy and nutmeg, another with mace and wine, and Mrs. A. C. shows how the same batter becomes fruit cake with the addition of four and a half pounds of raisins, currants and citron.