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Nameless Cake
1/2 C shortening 1 C cold water 4 t baking powder Cream shortening, add sugar, and cream again. Add ⅓ cup water, 1 C flour alternately and beat three minutes. Repeat until all water and flour are used up. Add baking powder to last cup of flour. Add last ½ cup water to cake mixture and fold in last cup of flour with baking powder. Beat egg whites until stiff and fold in. Bake in layers (375 degrees) 25 minutes.
Mrs. C. Klepper.
Note: Mrs. John Lester uses the following filling with this cake: Mix ½ C currant jelly with ½ C raspberry preserves for filling between first two layers; for second, use ½ C grated pineapple. Use boiled icing on top. 3 eggs 2 C flour
A church-supper white cake, typeset as community cookbooks often were: the ingredient list and the method do not agree with each other. Read both before you start, because the printed quantities are incomplete.
- The sugar is missingThe method says "add sugar, and cream again," but no sugar appears in the ingredient list. For a cake built on 1/2 cup shortening and roughly 3 cups flour, the period standard would be about 1 1/2 to 2 cups granulated sugar. That is an inference, not what the book says.
- The flour and water do not add upThe list gives 2 cups flour and 1 cup water. The method alternates half-cups of water with cups of flour, then calls for "last 1½ cup water" and a final cup of flour with the baking powder. Followed literally the method needs about 3 cups flour and 2 to 2 1/2 cups water. Trust the method over the list, or expect batter soup.
- Whites onlyThree eggs are listed but only the beaten whites are folded in. This is a white cake; the yolks are surplus and were presumably used elsewhere in the kitchen that day. Save them for custard or the boiled icing's companion, not for this batter.
- Water, not milkThe liquid here is cold water, not milk, and the fat is unspecified 'shortening'. Water and shortening tend to give a pale, light, slightly lean crumb; substituting milk will change the colour and texture.
- Baking powderFour teaspoons is about the usual proportion for three cups of flour, but it is added only to the final cup, which means it gets very little mixing. Sift it thoroughly into that last cup or the layers may rise unevenly.
- Oven and pans375 degrees is stated in the recipe, along with 25 minutes for layers. The pan size is not given; if you use thinner layers, begin testing before the stated time.
- The fillingThree cups of jelly and preserves between two layers is a great deal of wet fruit and will slide. Warm the currant jelly to loosen it, stir in the raspberry preserves, and let the mixture cool and set before spreading. 'Grated pineapple' may be fresh or canned; drain it hard either way or the layer above will slip.
- Boiled icingThe classic version: a sugar syrup taken to about 238-240F (soft-ball), poured in a thread into stiffly beaten whites and beaten until it holds. It sets crisp on the outside within an hour and does not keep past a day or two.
- YieldAs written the recipe makes three layers and serves twelve to sixteen. With the fruit filling and boiled icing it is a sweet cake; cut small slices.
"Nameless Cake" appears as a title in American community cookbooks. Whether it was a contributor's joke about a family recipe that never had a proper name, or a shrug at yet another white layer cake in a book already full of them, is not recorded. What distinguishes this one is its construction: shortening rather than butter, and cold water rather than milk. Vegetable shortening became widely available in the years after 1911, and was valued for being cheap, keeping without refrigeration, and producing a very white crumb -- though the recipe itself does not say what kind of shortening is meant. The double attribution is characteristic of the genre: Mrs. Klepper supplied the cake, and an appended note gives Mrs. Lester's filling. Currant jelly with raspberry preserves was a familiar layer-cake filling.