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Cocoa Cake
Fay Ree. 2 T cocoa 1/4 C water 1½ C butter 1 C sugar 1 egg 1 t vanilla 1¼ C flour 2 t baking powder 1/2 t salt ¾ C sour milk 1½ t soda Put cocoa and water in a saucepan and heat over a slow flame, stirring until a smooth paste is formed. Remove from fire, add butter, and if necessary reheat until butter is melted. Add sugar, beaten egg, vanilla and sour milk and beat well. Add flour, baking powder and baking soda.
Mrs. Reid. 1½ C sugar 1 C sour milk 1 t soda 1/2 C-chocolate (melted) 1/2 C butter Bake in layers or loaf.
Light Part 1 C sugar 1/3 C butter ½ C flour 1/2 C milk
Two contributions have been run together here, and the fractions have suffered in transcription. Fay Ree's cake is complete and workable; Mrs. Reid's is a fragment.
- Quantities checkedThe printed page gives 3/4 cup sour milk, 1½ teaspoons soda and 1¼ cups flour, and our text now matches it. That is a slack batter, so expect a moist, close-grained cake rather than a light one.
- AbbreviationsT is tablespoon, t teaspoon, C cup. Two tablespoons cocoa means natural unsweetened cocoa powder, not a drinking-cocoa mix, which is mostly sugar and milk solids.
- Sour milkNot spoiled milk but naturally soured raw milk, thick and tangy. Use buttermilk cup for cup, or add 2 teaspoons lemon juice or white vinegar to ¾ cup whole milk and let it stand ten minutes. The acid is what activates the soda.
- Both soda and powderThe soda neutralizes the sour milk and the baking powder supplies the rest of the lift. Keep both. Sift them with the flour rather than dumping them on top of the wet batter as written, or you will get bitter pockets.
- The cocoa paste"A slow flame" is low heat. Cook the cocoa and water only until it thickens and loses its raw edge, perhaps a minute — it scorches quickly and the cake will taste burnt. Let it cool to lukewarm before the beaten egg goes in.
- Oven and panNo temperature is given. 350F is the usual modern default for a cake of this kind. Bake in a greased 8-inch square or two 8-inch rounds, 25 to 30 minutes for layers, 35 to 40 for a loaf, until a tester comes out clean. Serves 8 to 10.
- Mrs. Reid's version is incompleteHer dark part lists no flour and no eggs, though it does include 1 teaspoon of soda, and the "Light Part" that follows suggests a marble or dark-and-light cake. As printed it cannot be assembled; treat it as a curiosity and bake Fay Ree's.
Church and society cook books of this kind were, by most accounts, compiled from members' handwritten cards, set in type by a local printer, and proofread by nobody in particular — which is likely why fraction bars vanish and why two women's cakes collide in one entry. The recipe itself belongs to a distinct American moment: cocoa powder is generally said to have become cheap and shelf-stable in the decades after Dutch processing spread, and by the early twentieth century a cocoa cake was the economical alternative to one built on expensive block chocolate. The sour-milk-and-soda method is older still, a holdover from households that kept a milk cow and always had a crock going off; buttermilk recipes are its direct descendants.