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White Cake
5 egg whites 2 t baking powder 1 t flavoring 2 C cake flour Cream butter and sugar together, add water, then flour which has been sifted three times with baking powder. At last fold in stiffly beaten whites of eggs and flavoring. Stir until smooth. Filling for Cake 2 C sugar 4 T cold water 2 whites of eggs 20 marshmallows Flavoring Heat marshmallows in double boiler. Boil sugar and water until, it spins a thread. Pour over stiffly beaten eggs. Then pour into melted marshmallows.
Hannah Meyer. 1½ C sugar 12 t salt 3 C sifted pastry flour 3 egg whites
The page as printed is a scramble: two partial ingredient lists bracket the method, and the butter and liquid never get quantities at all. It is a standard white layer cake with boiled marshmallow icing, and it can be reconstructed, but read the whole entry before you start.
- The two ingredient lists are one cakeThe trailing list (1½ C sugar, salt, 3 C sifted pastry flour, 3 egg whites) is a compositor's leftover from the same or a neighbouring recipe, and it conflicts with the header list (5 whites, 2 C cake flour). Pick one set and stay with it; the header proportions with 5 whites are the more usual for a two-layer white cake.
- Missing amountsButter and water are both called for in the method but appear in neither list. Something like ½ C butter and ⅔ C water, with the 1½ C sugar from the trailing list, would suit 2 C cake flour and 5 whites. This is guesswork filling a printer's gap, not a conversion.
- "12 t salt"Almost certainly a typesetting error, most likely for ½ t. Twelve teaspoons of salt would be about 2½ oz in a cake made from 3 C flour.
- AbbreviationsC is cup, T tablespoon, t teaspoon. "Flavoring" in a white cake of this date means vanilla or almond extract, about 1 teaspoon.
- No oven givenThe page supplies none. Two greased 8-inch layers at 350F for 25 to 30 minutes, until the centre springs back, is a reasonable modern setting.
- Sifting three timesFlour of the period was less evenly milled than modern cake flour, and repeated sifting was the usual way to lighten it and distribute the baking powder. With modern cake flour, one sifting with the baking powder is generally enough.
- "Spins a thread"Thread stage, 230 to 235F on a candy thermometer. Syrup boiled past this will set the icing hard and grainy rather than marshmallowy.
- MarshmallowsIf the marshmallows of the period were about the size of today's regular ones, twenty comes to roughly 5 oz. Melt them in the double boiler while the syrup boils and work fast once the syrup is poured; the icing stiffens as it cools.
- Raw whites in the fillingThe hot syrup cooks the whites only partially. If you are serving anyone who should avoid undercooked egg, use pasteurized whites.
- YieldTwo 8-inch layers, 10 to 12 slices, with enough filling and icing to cover.
White cake earned its place in community cookbooks because it was the visible-effort cake: using only the whites meant a snowy crumb, and it meant the yolks had to be spent elsewhere. Nothing was wasted, but the pale colour advertised that a cook had eggs enough to divide them. The marshmallow filling dates the book fairly closely — commercial marshmallows became cheap and widely available in American groceries in the first decades of the twentieth century, and cooks folded them into boiled icings for a texture that held its gloss longer than plain meringue. The signature, Hannah Meyer, is doing what signatures in a community cookbook always do: vouching for the recipe on the strength of the woman who brought it.