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Boiled Cake
Mrs. Leonard Disney. 1/2 t cinnamon 12 t allspice 14 t cloves 2 C flour 1 t baking soda 1 t salt 1½ t baking powder Place on stove and boil together a few minutes. Set aside to cool. Then add 2 C flour and ½ t baking powder. Bake in moderate oven. BREAD CAKE (LOAF) Louise Wehrenberg. 1 large C yeast bread sponge 1 egg 1 C granulated sugar 1/2 C butter 1 t soda dissolved in 14 C boiling black coffee 1 t cinnamon 1 t cloves 1 t allspice ½ C flour 1 C raisins 1/2 C nutmeats, if desired Mrs. Quinten 2½ T butter 3 T sugar 1 C molasses Yolk 1 egg 2 C flour
A boiled cake belongs to the family of cakes whose fruit, sugar and liquid are simmered together first and cooled before the flour goes in. A few of the quantities here are hard to read with confidence, so treat the spicing by taste rather than by the letter.
- The hinge: cool it completelyThe boiled mixture must be at room temperature before flour, soda and baking powder are stirred in. Added to a warm base, the leavening starts working on the counter and the loaf rises in the pan rather than in the oven.
- Moderate ovenRead that as 350F. A boiled cake carries a lot of moisture and sugar, so it browns early; a loaf shape will want 45 to 60 minutes and should be tested with a skewer at the centre.
- Ambiguous spice quantitiesThe allspice and cloves are written without their fractions and cannot be taken literally. For a two-cup-of-flour cake, half a teaspoon of allspice and a quarter teaspoon of cloves sit in the normal range and match the cinnamon already given.
- Soda and baking powder togetherSoda in a cake of this sort usually depends on an acid in the boiled base, though the boiled ingredients themselves are missing from this text; the small measure of baking powder supplies extra lift. Keep both at the quantities given rather than increasing either, or the crumb can take on a soapy edge.
- Yeast bread spongeIn the companion loaf, "1 large C yeast bread sponge" means a cupful of the risen sponge or batter set for the day's bread. Bakers who no longer keep a sponge can substitute an equal volume of soft, fully risen white bread dough.
- NutmeatsSimply shelled nuts, chopped.
- Pan and yieldTwo cups of flour makes a modest loaf; an 8x4 inch pan suits it better than a 9x5, where it will bake shallow. Line the pan; the sugar in a boiled batter sticks stubbornly.
Boiled cakes and "bread cakes" are thrift baking. Versions of the boiled cake turn up under names like war cake and poor man's cake whenever eggs and butter were dear or rationed. The second borrows a cupful of yeast sponge from the day's bread, so the cake rises on leavening already paid for. Both were exactly the sort of contribution a congregational cookbook collected: recipes tested weekly in home kitchens, credited by name to the woman who supplied them, and passed around a community where a good loaf cake had to survive the trip to a church supper.