Silver Cake
Whites of 8 eggs. 1/4 pound of butter. 1/2 pound of sugar. 1/4 and 1/2 a quarter of a pound of sifted flour, or 6 ounces of flour. Cream the butter and sugar.--Mrs. W. C. R.
Silver Cake. 1 pound powdered sugar 3/4 pound flour. 1/2 pound butter. Whites of 11 eggs. 1 teaspoonful essence of bitter almond.
Cream the butter, gradually rub in the flour, then the sugar; add the flavoring; last of all, stir in the whites of the eggs beaten to a stiff froth. Flavor the icing with vanilla or bitter almonds.--Mrs. S.T. Silver Cake.
One cup sugar. 1/2 cup butter. 1 1/2 cups flour. 1/2 cup of milk. 1/2 teaspoon of cream tartar, and half as much soda Whites of 4 eggs. Beat the butter and eggs to a cream, then add the milk and flour with the soda and cream tartar; whisk the whites of the eggs to a froth, and stir them in gently at the last. Flavor with lemon.--Mrs. C.
Three versions of the same white cake, collected from three contributors, and none of them tells you the pan, the oven or the time. The first is printed incomplete. Here is what you need to fill in.
- The first recipe is a fragmentMrs. W. C. R.'s version gives ingredients and then stops at "Cream the butter and sugar" — no liquid, no flavoring, no method for the whites. Use the second or third recipe if you want a workable procedure; "1/4 and 1/2 a quarter of a pound" is simply 6 ounces, as she says.
- Weights into cupsFor Mrs. S.T.: 'powdered sugar' here means finely ground granulated sugar, not modern confectioners' sugar, so reckon about 2 1/4 cups to the pound (modern confectioners' sugar would run nearer 3 3/4 cups to the pound). 3/4 lb flour is about 2 3/4 cups; 1/2 lb butter is two sticks. The whites of 11 period eggs come to roughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/3 cups; measure by volume rather than counting, since modern large eggs are bigger.
- Essence of bitter almondIn the 1870s this was often true bitter-almond oil, which carries hydrocyanic acid unless it has been rectified. Modern almond extract is benzaldehyde in alcohol and is the intended flavor with none of that history; use it, and a teaspoon is generous in a cake this size.
- Cream of tartar and sodaMrs. C.'s 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar with 1/4 teaspoon soda is a homemade single-acting baking powder, doing roughly the work of a teaspoon of modern baking powder. It begins working on contact with the milk, so have the pan greased and the oven hot before you mix.
- OvenThe book gives no oven, pan or time for any of the three. A cake of this richness suits a moderate oven, in modern terms around 325 to 350F. As a starting point, Mrs. C.'s smaller cake will take a single 8-inch pan and roughly half an hour; Mrs. S.T.'s large one suits a 10-inch tube pan and something closer to an hour, tented with foil if the top colors early. Test rather than trust the clock.
- The unusual creaming orderMrs. S.T. rubs the flour into the butter before the sugar goes in, which coats the flour in fat and gives a close, fine, almost pound-cake crumb rather than a fluffy one. It is not an error, but it means the beaten whites are the only lift — fold them in with a light hand and bake at once.
- "Beat the butter and eggs to a cream"In the third recipe this means butter and sugar; the whites are reserved and whisked separately, as the same sentence later makes clear. Cream butter and sugar, add milk alternately with the flour and leavening, then fold.
- YieldMrs. S.T.'s cake is large, 16 to 20 slices. Mrs. C.'s makes one modest 8-inch layer, or a dozen or so cupcakes. Only Mrs. S.T.'s version mentions icing, flavored with vanilla or bitter almonds; a plain white icing is the usual finish for cakes of this kind.
Silver cake existed to solve a problem: any recipe calling for eight or eleven egg whites left a bowl of yolks behind, and the usual answer was gold cake, its yellow twin. The two are often printed near one another in nineteenth-century American cookbooks, and the batters were sometimes marbled in a single tin. The whiteness was part of the point — refined white sugar, finely bolted white flour and butter with no yolk in it suggested a well-stocked larder, and a snowy crumb under white icing suited a wedding or a christening. Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1878, works by gathering contributions from named Virginia housekeepers, which is why three women's versions of the same cake sit here in a row with their disagreements intact.