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Graham Cracker Cake (T lemon extract t salt Mrs)
1 C sugar. 2 T butter. 2 eggs. 1 1/2 C sour milk. 1 t soda. 1 t lemon extract ¼ t salt Mrs. Graeff. 32 graham crackers, rolled very fine Cream sugar and butter, add yolks, beat well. Add alternately the sour milk with soda and the graham crackers, salt and lemon. Fold in stiffly beaten whites. Bake in layers in moderate oven. Good with lemon filling.
Edna F. Doerschuk. 1½ C graham crackers, rolled fine
The page as printed is a scramble of two contributors' cards, and the quantities for sugar, butter, eggs and sour milk have dropped out entirely. Treat what follows as guidance for reconstructing it rather than a working ingredient list.
- The list is incompleteThe method calls for sugar, butter, egg yolks, sour milk and soda, none of which appear with amounts. Only the salt (1/4 t, printed as "14 t"), the lemon extract (1 teaspoon) and the crackers survive. A crumb cake of this type typically runs about 1 cup sugar, 1/2 cup butter, 3 eggs separated, and 1 cup sour milk with 1 teaspoon soda.
- Two different crumb measuresOne card says 32 graham crackers rolled very fine, the other 1 1/2 cups of crumbs. Depending on whether a 'cracker' meant a full sheet or a single square, 32 of them would give well over 1 1/2 cups of fine crumbs, so the two cards are unlikely to be the same cake. Pick one and stay with it.
- AbbreviationsT is teaspoon and C is cup on this page, with T for tablespoon the usual convention in books of this kind. The stray '14' is almost certainly a broken 1/4.
- Moderate ovenConventionally read as around 350F, though the book gives no temperature. Layers of this size will likely want 25 to 30 minutes; crumbs brown faster than a flour cake, so check early.
- Sour milk and sodaPeriod sour milk was raw milk left to clabber. Substitute buttermilk, or 1 cup milk with 1 tablespoon lemon juice or vinegar stirred in and left 10 minutes. The soda needs that acid to lift the batter; there is no baking powder here.
- Graham crackers have changedModern crackers are generally sweeter and more heavily honeyed than the older article. If you use a full cup of sugar the cake may read as very sweet; three-quarters is likely closer to the original balance.
- No flour at allThe crumbs are the entire structure, and the stiffly beaten whites are folded in last. Fold gently and bake at once; the crumbs absorb liquid quickly and a batter left standing turns pasty.
- Lemon fillingThe suggested filling would be a cooked lemon curd or cornstarch-thickened lemon custard, spread between the layers rather than a frosting. With the main quantities missing, yield can only be guessed at.
Graham crackers descend from the coarse unsifted wheat flour promoted by Sylvester Graham, the Presbyterian minister and temperance lecturer whose dietary reform campaigns ran through the 1830s and 40s; by the time this church book was compiled the cracker had long since become a sweetened commercial biscuit with little connection to his austere program. Crumb cakes like this one belong to a whole family of American recipes that replace flour with something already on the shelf, and they multiplied in community cookbooks, alongside cakes built on vanilla wafers, dates or leftover bread. The double attribution here, to Mrs. Graeff and to Edna F. Doerschuk, may reflect how these volumes were assembled — the page is garbled enough that one can only guess whether two women submitted much the same cake and their cards were run together.