Tipsy Cake
Soak sponge cake in wine and water. Make a custard of six eggs to one quart of milk, and pour over it. Reserve the whites, beat to stiff froth, to put over last.--Mrs. Dr. S.
A skeleton recipe of the kind common in Housekeeping in Old Virginia — it assumes the cook already knows how to build a boiled custard and only needs reminding of the proportions. Everything hinges on the custard: six yolks to a quart of milk is a thin pouring custard, and it will scramble if it boils.
- The custardWhisk the six yolks with sugar (the original omits it; 1/2 to 2/3 cup for a quart is right for this style), temper in the scalded milk, then cook over low or indirect heat, stirring constantly, until it coats a spoon at about 175F. It must not simmer. Strain it while hot and pour it over the cake warm so it soaks in.
- Wine and waterNo proportions are given, and no cake size either. Something like a cup of sherry or Madeira loosened with half a cup of water is a reasonable starting point for a single sponge layer; the cake should be damp through but not collapsing. Southern recipes of this period that do name a wine usually call for sherry or Madeira rather than a dry table wine.
- Sponge cakeA plain, dry, eggy sponge or ladyfingers, a day old, is what this needs. Modern supermarket sponge is softer and sweeter and turns to paste; stale ladyfingers or pound cake hold up better.
- The whites on topBeaten whites piled on raw were normal in 1877. If that is a concern, either brown the meringue briefly in a 400F oven until the peaks color, or beat the whites with sugar over simmering water to about 160F before piling them on. Sweetened whipped cream is the other common finish.
- AssemblyCake in a deep glass dish, wine poured over, custard poured over that, then chilled at least four hours so the layers set and the custard firms. Add the whites just before serving; they weep if they sit.
- YieldA single sponge layer built this way serves eight to ten. The custard quantity is generous, which is deliberate — the cake should sit in it.
Tipsy cake is a close English relation of the trifle: cake soaked in wine, drowned in boiled custard, crowned with froth. In the American South it acquired the nickname "tipsy parson," the joke being, so the story is usually told, on the visiting clergyman who took a second helping without asking what was in it. Its persistence in Virginia cookery has a practical basis in the wines of the well-stocked Tidewater sideboard through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Madeira especially, since it traveled well by ship and improved rather than spoiled in the heat. Marion Cabell Tyree's 1877 collection gathers such recipes as contributed shorthand from named housekeepers, which is why "Mrs. Dr. S." can state proportions for a custard and assume the rest is understood.