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Very Delicate Pound Cake
16 eggs, 4 yolks. 1 pound of flour. 1 pound of sugar. 3/4 pound of butter.--Mrs. S. T.
SUPERIOR POUND CAKE. 1 pound of white sugar. 3/4 pound of butter. 1 pound of flour. Whites of 12 eggs, yolks of 9.
Cream the butter; add part of the sugar and yolks, and beat well; then gradually add the whites, and flour and balance of yolks. Beat well, flavor with extract of lemon, and bake in a moderate oven.--Mrs. F. C. W. Pound Cake. 1 pound flour. 1 pound sugar. 3/4 pound butter. 11 eggs. Sift and dry the flour, sift the sugar; wash all the salt out of the butter, and squeeze all the water out of it. Cream the butter with half the flour or more; beat the whites and yolks separately, beating rather more than half of the sugar with the yolks; then rub the remaining sugar and flour up together. Mix all these ingredients, part at a time, first one, then another. Beat well, and season with French brandy and lemon, or wine and nutmeg, to your taste.--Mrs. M.
BUTTER SPONGE CAKE. 14 eggs. Weight of 14 in sugar. Weight of 8 in butter. Weight of 6 in flour. Juice and grated rind of two lemons. All the ingredients added to the beaten yolks, and the frothed whites stirred in last.--Mrs. S. T.
Butter Sponge Cake. 14 eggs. Their weight in sugar. 8 in flour. 6 in butter. The rind of 1, and juice of 2 lemons.
Bake quickly.--Mrs. S.
Five related cake formulas printed as a group, all built on weight rather than volume and all relying on beaten egg for lift. A kitchen scale makes them straightforward; measuring cups will not.
- The proportions in cupsOne pound of flour is roughly 3 1/2 to 4 cups sifted; one pound of granulated sugar is about 2 1/4 cups; 3/4 pound of butter is three sticks. These are full-size batches producing 4 to 5 pounds of batter, enough for two large loaf pans or a big tube pan.
- Eggs were smallerNineteenth-century eggs are generally reckoned a little smaller than modern ones, perhaps around 1 1/2 ounces shelled against about 1 3/4 for a modern large egg. Where the recipe gives "weight of 14 in sugar," weigh your own eggs and match that figure rather than assuming a number; for the pound cakes, 9 or 10 modern large eggs in place of 11 is a reasonable substitution.
- No leavening, on purposeThere is no baking powder or soda anywhere here. The rise comes from air beaten into the butter and the separately whipped whites, which is why the instructions insist on beating well; in the butter sponge cakes the frothed whites are stirred in last. Deflate the whites and the cake will be dense.
- "Wash all the salt out of the butter"Period butter was heavily salted for keeping and held variable water. Modern unsalted butter needs no washing; just have it at cool room temperature, around 65F, so it creams without breaking.
- Oven temperatures"moderate oven" is conventionally read as about 325 to 350F, and a large loaf will want 1 to 1 1/2 hours. "Bake quickly," for the butter sponge, implies a hotter oven, perhaps 400 to 425F, and a correspondingly short bake; the recipe specifies neither pan nor time.
- Creaming butter with flourMrs. M's instruction to cream the butter with half the flour is not an error; coating the flour with fat restricts gluten development and is generally held to give a closer, more tender crumb. Follow the order as written rather than substituting the standard butter-and-sugar method.
- FlavoringExtract of lemon, French brandy, wine and nutmeg are all offered across the group. Two tablespoons of brandy or 2 teaspoons of extract per pound of flour is in the right range. The sponge cakes call for grated rind added with the other ingredients; rubbing the zest into the sugar is a modern refinement, not in the text.
- YieldA batch on this scale will serve roughly 20 to 24, though the first formula, with 16 eggs and 4 extra yolks, is larger. They keep well wrapped for several days, and pound cake is often said to improve on the second day.
Pound cake takes its name from the original English formula of a pound each of flour, sugar, butter and eggs, a ratio easy to remember and to scale in a kitchen with limited measures. In Housekeeping in Old Virginia, commonly catalogued as 1878 with later printings, the variants here cut the butter to three-quarters of a pound and push the egg count upward. Marion Cabell Tyree assembled the book from contributions by named and initialed Virginia housewives, which explains why five near-identical cakes sit side by side: each was somebody's family standard. The butter sponge cakes at the end are sized by the weight of the eggs themselves rather than by the pound.