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Huckleberry Cake
1 C butter. 2 C sugar. 1/2 C milk. 4 eggs, beaten separately 1 t grated nutmeg 1 t cinnamon Mrs. Kruckman. 2 t baking powder 1 qt. huckleberries 3 C flour Mix ingredients in the usual manner. Dredge berries with flour and add last. Bake in a loaf for one hour. 1 C sugar 2 T butter 2 eggs ½ C sour milk 1 t soda
This entry has been scrambled in transcription inetwo ingredient lists appear to have run together, and the cook is left to sort them out. Read it carefully before shopping.
- Two recipes, one blockThe text may represent two columns of print merged into one. One grouping calls for 4 eggs beaten separately, spices, baking powder and 3 cups flour; the other for 1 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons butter, 2 eggs, 1½ cups sour milk and 1 teaspoon soda. Neither grouping is complete on its own -- the first has no sugar, fat or liquid, the second no flour or berries -- so any attempt to bake it means reconstructing a plausible whole.
- Sour milk and sodaSour milk here means naturally clabbered raw milk, mildly acidic. Buttermilk is the standard substitute, or a cup and a half of milk with a tablespoon and a half of lemon juice or vinegar stirred in and left ten minutes. The soda needs that acid; used with sweet milk it leaves a soapy taste and a yellowish crumb.
- Leavening, doubledA cake with both 2 teaspoons baking powder and 1 teaspoon soda is over-leavened unless the sour milk is present in quantity. If you use buttermilk, the soda alone will do most of the lifting; which leavening belonged with which set of ingredients cannot be recovered from the text as printed.
- A quart of huckleberriesRoughly 4 cups, about 1¼ lb. True huckleberries are wild and now hard to buy; cultivated blueberries are the usual stand-in and behave the same way in batter. Frozen berries should go in still frozen, or they bleed.
- Dredging the berriesThe one instruction worth keeping exactly as written. Tossing the fruit in flour from the measured 3 cups not extra gives the batter something to grip and keeps the berries from sinking into a purple stratum at the bottom of the loaf.
- Eggs beaten separatelyWhites whipped to soft peaks and folded in at the end, yolks beaten into the butter and sugar. Beating eggs separately was a common way of lightening a cake, and it appears here alongside the baking powder.
- OvenNo temperature is given, as was normal. A loaf cake of this size bakes at about 350F for the stated hour; test with a skewer at 50 minutes. In a 9x5 pan expect closer to 65 minutes.
- YieldBaked in a loaf, as directed. Three cups of flour with a quart of berries makes more batter than a single 9x5 pan will hold, so divide it between two pans and start testing well before the stated hour.
Compiled community cookbooks were assembled from handwritten cards submitted by contributors and set in columns by a local printer, which is one way ingredient lists from different contributors could end up interleaved on the same page. The phrase "mix ingredients in the usual manner" assumes a method the cook already knew: creaming butter and sugar, adding yolks, then flour and liquid alternately, and folding in the whites. Sour milk appears constantly in these books for a practical reason -- milk soured on its own in a household without reliable refrigeration, and the soda that neutralized it turned a nuisance into leavening.