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Superior White Cake
1 pound sugar. The whites of 10 eggs. 3/4 pound butter. 1 pound of flour. Flavor with lemon or rose-water, and bake in a oven.-Mrs. F. C. W.
A pound-cake formula in the old style, given entirely by weight and with no leavening, no liquid and no oven temperature. It works, but only if the aeration is done properly.
- The hinge: air is the only leaveningThere is no baking powder or soda here. All the lift comes from butter creamed with sugar until visibly pale and fluffy, and from egg whites beaten to soft, glossy peaks that are folded in rather than stirred. Overwork the whites into the batter and the cake bakes dense and gummy.
- Weights in modern terms1 pound sugar is about 2 1/4 cups; 3/4 pound butter is 3 sticks; 1 pound flour is roughly 3 1/2 to 4 cups depending on how it is scooped. Weigh it if you can, since the whole balance of the recipe is by weight.
- Ten whitesThe whites of 10 large eggs come to about 1 1/4 cups, or 300 g. Eggs of the period were ungraded and less uniform than today's, so if your eggs are jumbo, measure by volume rather than counting.
- "Bake in a oven"A word appears to have been dropped in setting the type, but what it was cannot be recovered, and "moderate" and "quick" would have meant different heats. For a butter-heavy cake this size, a modern 325-350F works. A hotter oven sets the crust before the center rises.
- FlourSouthern flour of the period was generally soft winter wheat, closer to modern cake or pastry flour. All-purpose will give a coarser, sturdier crumb; a mix of 3 cups all-purpose to 1/2 cup cornstarch approximates it.
- Rose-waterStill sold, but modern distillates vary widely in strength. Start with a teaspoon of rose-water or the zest and juice of one lemon, and taste the batter.
- Pan and yieldThe batter fills a 10-inch tube pan or two 9-inch loaf pans, and serves 12 to 16. Grease and flour well, and expect 60-75 minutes in a tube pan; test with a skewer at the thickest point.
- CoolingA cake this rich in butter is fragile hot. Let it sit 15 minutes in the pan before turning out, then cool completely before cutting or it will crumble.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named Virginia housewives, is full of these terse weight-based cakes signed only with initials — recipes traded among households where the cook already knew the method and needed only the proportions. A "white cake" meant one made with whites alone, which came into fashion as refined white sugar and bleached-looking crumb became marks of a good table; the leftover yolks went into gold cake, custard or boiled dressing. The pound-for-pound scheme descends from the British pound cake, and the proportions here — a pound each of sugar and flour to three-quarters of a pound of butter — show how little the formula had drifted by 1879, well after chemical leaveners had become established.