Milwaukee Cake

This is a meringue-topped butter cake typed up from a handwritten card, and the transcription has lost some fractions. Read the numbers below before you start.

• The flour quantity and the run-on listThe baking time reads ¾ of an hour, or 45 minutes, as printed. The flour, however, still reads "14 C", where a fraction character has dropped out; 1¼ C is the likely reading, though 1½ C is possible. The ingredient list also runs on past the signature: the butter and sugar at the end belong at the beginning, creamed together before the yolks go in.
• No liquid is listed½ C butter, sugar, 5 yolks and the flour give a very stiff batter with nothing to loosen it. A few tablespoons of milk or cream, added until the batter spreads, is one way to close the gap, but the original as printed does not call for any, and that is a genuine gap rather than something to guess at precisely.
• "Slowly"The recipe gives no temperature and never uses the term "slow oven"; "slowly" in this period generally implies something in the region of 300–325F, at the upper end of what was called a slow oven. Forty-five minutes at that sort of heat suits a cake carrying a sugar-heavy meringue, which scorches at anything brisk.
• Starting in a cold ovenThe card gives no reason for this. It may well be deliberate, since a gradual rise lets the white set and dry rather than souffléing and cracking. If you follow it, allow closer to an hour and judge by a skewer in the cake layer, not by the top.
• Royal baking powderA brand name, used here the way a cook would name it out loud. Any modern double-acting baking powder works at the same 2 teaspoons; there is no need to seek out the brand.
• The meringueOne cup of sugar to five whites is a firm meringue. Beat the whites to soft peaks first, then add the sugar gradually, or it will weep into the batter. Spread it to the edges so it anchors to the pan and does not shrink into an island.
• The panA 3-inch-deep "coffee cake pan" is roughly a 9-inch square or 8-inch round with straight sides. Grease it and line the base; the meringue makes the finished cake awkward to invert, so plan to cut and serve from the pan.
• Yield and servingAbout nine to twelve squares. It is a coffee cake in the German sense — eaten in the afternoon with coffee, not iced and not layered.