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Pineapple Cake
Mrs. S. Meaker, 2 C sifted Swansdown flour 2/3 C milk 3 t baking powder 1/2 C butter 1 C sugar 1/2 t vanilla extract 12 t lemon extract 3 egg whites, stiffly beaten Sift flour once, measure, add baking powder, and sift three times. Cream butter thoroughly, add sugar gradually, creaming well after each addition. Add flour and milk alternately (a small amount at a time). Fold in egg whites; bake in a greased pan eight inches square and two inches deep, for from 50 to 55 minutes at 350 degrees. Cover the square with Pineapple filling, then frost all over with soft boiled icing. 1/2 C granulated sugar 12 t lemon juice Filling: 4 slices canned pineapple cut in small cubes ¼ C water Cook sugar and water until it forms a soft ball in cold water. Add pineapple and continue cooking until it forms a thick syrup. careful that it does not turn dark. When cold add lemon juice and spread on cake.
Be Mary E. Kern, Mrs. Anna Suydam.
A plain white butter cake with a cooked pineapple filling and boiled icing, written in the abbreviated shorthand of a 1930s-40s church collection. The instructions are unusually complete for the genre, including a real oven temperature, but a few of the small measurements have lost their fractions in printing.
- The abbreviationsC is cup, t is teaspoon, T would be tablespoon. Where a quantity reads as a whole number that makes no sense in context, treat it as a lost fraction: half a teaspoon of lemon extract, half a teaspoon of lemon juice, and a quarter cup of water for the filling all fit the proportions.
- Swansdown flourSwans Down was and is a soft-wheat cake flour, considerably lower in protein than all-purpose. Use cake flour if you want the intended crumb; if you substitute all-purpose, remove two tablespoons per cup and expect a slightly firmer cake.
- Sift three timesThis is not fussiness. Cake flour packs tightly and the repeated sifting is what aerates it and distributes the baking powder evenly in a batter that gets no chemical help from an acid ingredient. Sift, then measure by spooning into the cup, as the recipe specifies in that order.
- No saltThe recipe omits salt entirely; salted butter may simply have been assumed. A quarter teaspoon is worth adding if your butter is unsalted.
- Folding the whitesThree whites beaten stiff are the only leavening beyond the baking powder, and they go in last. Fold rather than stir, and get the cake into the oven promptly; a batter left standing loses the air.
- Pan and timingAn 8-inch square pan two inches deep at 350F for 50 to 55 minutes is on the long side for a cake this size. Start checking at 40 minutes. The recipe calls only for a greased pan; flouring it as well, or lining the base with parchment, will help it turn out cleanly.
- The filling's hingeSugar and water cooked to the soft-ball stage is about 235-240F on a thermometer. Once the pineapple goes in, the fruit's water thins the syrup and it must be reduced again; watch the colour closely, as the recipe itself warns, because once the added water has boiled off the syrup can darken quickly.
- Canned pineappleFour slices from a standard can is roughly three-quarters of a cup once cubed. Drain them well, or the extra juice extends the cooking time and risks the darkening the recipe warns about.
- Boiled icingSoft boiled icing is a meringue-type frosting: hot sugar syrup beaten into egg whites, closely related to the seven-minute frosting beaten over hot water. It sets with a thin dry shell and stays soft beneath, and it does not keep well. Assemble the cake close to the day it is served.
- YieldOne 8-inch square, filled on top and frosted all over, serving nine to twelve.
The recipe's precision is a clue to its origin. Naming a brand of flour, specifying sifting three times, giving an exact pan size and an exact oven temperature are hallmarks of manufacturer-issued baking literature of the 1930s and after, when flour and baking powder companies distributed booklets of tested recipes to promote their products and to take advantage of the newly reliable thermostatic oven. Home cooks copied them into their own files, and from there into community cookbooks, where they sit alongside recipes that still say nothing more than "bake in a moderate oven till done." The pineapple filling points the same way: canned pineapple in rings, cheap and reliably available after the Hawaiian canneries scaled up in the early twentieth century, became a fixture of American dessert baking precisely because it needed no preparation beyond opening the tin.