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Tartaric Cakes
Beat the yolks of three eggs, the whites whipped to a froth, three full cups of brown sugar, half a pound of butter, one spoonful lard, one and a half pound of flour, leaving two spoonfuls to roll with. Mix all well together. Dissolve one teaspoonful soda and three-quarters teaspoonful tartaric acid in a little cream. First mix the soda with the dough, then the acid. Season with mace or wine. They will rise very much.--Mrs. D.
A stiff rolled cookie dough leavened by mixing acid and alkali in separately at the last moment. The order given is not a quirk — it is the whole method.
- Add the soda first, then the acidDissolving both together in the cream would spend most of the gas before the dough is touched. Work the soda through, then the tartaric acid solution, then get the cakes cut and into the oven without delay.
- Tartaric acidSold today as a fine white powder in the baking or winemaking aisle. It is not cream of tartar, which is a good deal weaker acid for acid; if you substitute, you need considerably more of it and the dough will behave differently.
- "Spoonful"In cookbooks of this period a plain spoonful usually means a tablespoon, and the teaspoonfuls here are specified as such. The two spoonfuls of flour "to roll with" are simply the dusting flour held back from the pound and a half.
- Butter and lardHalf a pound is two sticks. The single spoonful of lard is there for tenderness and short texture; shortening works, and all butter gives a slightly crisper, more spreading cake.
- Brown sugarNineteenth-century brown sugar was moister and less refined than modern light brown. Pack it lightly into the cup rather than tamping it down, or the dough turns heavy.
- CreamA few tablespoons of heavy or light cream, enough to dissolve the powders. Milk will do.
- SeasoningGround mace, about a teaspoon, or a tablespoon or two of sherry or Madeira in place of it. Wine also loosens the dough slightly, so hold back a little cream if you use it.
- OvenNo temperature is given, as none could be. Bake rolled and cut cakes about a quarter inch thick at 375F for 8 to 10 minutes, until the edges just color.
- YieldA pound and a half of flour makes a great deal of dough: many dozens of two-inch cakes rolled a quarter inch thick, so plan on baking in several batches. The dough keeps well chilled if you want to bake in batches, though the rise slackens the longer it stands.
Before packaged baking powder became reliable and cheap, cooks bought the two halves of the reaction separately and combined them at the mixing bowl — soda from the grocer, tartaric acid or cream of tartar from the druggist, both byproducts of the wine trade. Recipes titled "tartaric cakes" or "acid cakes" are said to turn up through the middle and later nineteenth century and are essentially a home-assembled baking powder cookie, which is why the instructions dwell so precisely on the order of addition. Housekeeping in Old Virginia, edited by Marion Cabell Tyree and issued at Louisville by John P. Morton in 1878, gathered contributions from a wide circle of Virginia housekeepers and credits them by initial, as here with Mrs. D.; the book appeared just as commercial baking powders were displacing this kind of two-part leavening from ordinary kitchens.