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Chocolate Cake
4 ozs. (1/2 cup) butter 12 Ozs. (1½ cups) sugar 2 eggs 1 gill (1/2 cup) sour milk I square chocolate 1 gill (1/2 cup) boiling water 1 teaspoonful vanilla extract 1/2 teaspoonful rose extract 1/2 lb. (2 cups) flour 1 teaspoonful baking soda Cream the butter and sugar together, then add the eggs well beaten, the milk, the chocolate dissolved in the boiling water, the extracts, the flour, and the soda. Mix carefully, turn into a shallow buttered and floured earthenware dish in a moderate oven for threequarters of an hour.
A plain sour-milk chocolate cake, baked in an earthenware dish rather than a tin. The batter is thin and the leavening depends entirely on the soda meeting the acid in the milk, so it wants to go into a hot oven promptly.
- Moderate ovenAround 350F is the usual modern reading; preheat fully. Earthenware heats slowly, so allow that the batter will take a little longer to start rising than it would in metal.
- One square chocolateA "square" is one ounce of unsweetened baking chocolate, the standard moulded portion of the period. Chop it and stir it into the half cup of boiling water until smooth before adding; modern unsweetened chocolate behaves the same way.
- Sour milkNot spoiled milk but naturally soured, mildly acidic milk. Buttermilk is the direct substitute; failing that, half a cup of whole milk with a scant teaspoon of lemon juice or vinegar, left five minutes.
- The sodaWhisk the baking soda into the flour rather than adding it loose at the end, or you will get bitter streaks. It is the only leavening here, and it starts working the moment it hits the sour milk, so mix and bake without delay.
- Add saltThe recipe has none. A quarter teaspoon of salt worked into the flour brings the chocolate forward.
- Rose extractRose flavouring alongside vanilla turns up in recipes of this sort, as here. Modern rose extracts and rose waters vary enormously in strength — start with a quarter teaspoon of a concentrated extract, or leave it out if you want a straightforwardly chocolate cake.
- Dish and timingA shallow dish means roughly an 8- or 9-inch square, about 2 inches deep. Three-quarters of an hour suits thick earthenware; in a metal pan of that size start testing at 30 minutes, and in any case go by a clean skewer rather than the clock.
- YieldAbout 9 to 12 squares. The recipe specifies no icing.
The batter is a standard American sour-milk chocolate cake of the sort common around 1900, leavened with soda rather than baking powder because sour milk or buttermilk was the by-product every household with a churn already had. The half teaspoon of rose extract is the older taste showing through — rose water was a mainstay of English and colonial baking long before vanilla became cheap and general, and some recipes of this period use both, vanilla for body and rose for perfume. Melting the chocolate in boiling water rather than creaming it into the butter was a common method while chocolate came as hard unsweetened cakes meant chiefly for drinking.