““I want to stir up a cake this evening, Ma. Can I have white sugar for it?” When their taste for sweets became strong, Ellen and Frankie would ask for store-bought sugar to cook with, although they could get along with sorghum or honey. Flour and meal ground from the farm grain was ready for their use, plentiful as a rule, and drippings and lard, eggs and milk. “I’ll bake that white cake Pa likes.””
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
1758. INGREDIENTS.--1/2 breakfast-cupful of sugar, 1 breakfast-cupful of rich sour cream, 2 breakfast-cupfuls of flour, 1/2 teaspoonful of carbonate of soda, honey to taste. _Mode_.--Mix the sugar and cream together; dredge in the flour, with as much honey as will flavour the mixture nicely; stir it well, that all the ingredients may be thoroughly mixed; add the carbonate of soda, and beat the cake well for another 5 minutes; put it into a buttered tin, bake it from 1/2 to 3/4 hour, and let it be eaten warm. _Time_.--1/2 to 3/4 hour. _Average cost_, 8d. _Sufficient_ for 3 or 4 persons. _Seasonable_ at any time.
Sources: The passage is from Helga Sandburg, The wheel of earth, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Beeton, The Book of Household Management of 1861, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — plum cloth, beehive stamp.