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An Inexpensive Angel Food
Most people like angel food with fruit or icecream, but many housewives hesitate about making it on account of the quantity of eggs it requires. However, this little cake is delicious, inexpensive and large enough to serve a family of six or eight.
Whites of 4 eggs, pinch of salt, 5/8 cupful of sugar, 1/4 teaspoonful of cream of tartar, and 1/2 cupful of flour measured after sifting. Add salt to eggs and beat about half; then add cream of tartar and beat stiff. Fold in sugar. Sift flour four times and fold in lightly. Bake in ungreased tin for forty minutes in slow oven.
A quarter-size angel food built on four egg whites rather than the usual dozen. The method is sound; only the measurements and oven language need translating.
- Slow ovenBake at 300-325F. Angel food set too fast on the outside will crack badly and sink; forty minutes at the low end of that range suits a small cake.
- Cream of tartar quantityThe printed "14 teaspoonful" is not a usable amount and is almost certainly a mangled 1/4 teaspoon. That is a plausible quantity for four whites; recipes of the period vary, and up to half a teaspoon would not be out of place.
- 5/8 cupful of sugarThat is half a cup plus two tablespoons, about 4 1/2 oz. Superfine or caster sugar folds in with less deflation than granulated.
- Flour measured after siftingHalf a cup of sifted flour is roughly 2 oz, appreciably less than half a cup scooped from the bag. Sift into the cup and level; do not pack. Cake flour will give a finer crumb.
- Beat about half, then add acidWhites are taken to soft foam before the cream of tartar goes in, then beaten stiff. Stop at stiff but still glossy peaks; whites beaten dry will not fold and the cake bakes coarse and dry.
- Sift flour four timesThis is not fussiness. Repeated sifting aerates and lightens the flour so it can be folded through the foam in a few strokes rather than many, which is what keeps the volume.
- Ungreased tinEssential. The batter climbs the dry sides of the pan as it bakes. The recipe names only a tin; a small tube pan of about 6-7 inches would suit this quantity. A greased or nonstick pan will give a squat cake.
- CoolingInvert the pan as soon as it comes out and leave it upside down until fully cold, then loosen with a thin knife. Cooling right side up collapses the crumb.
- YieldA small tube cake serving six, more modestly eight, as the original claims. It is at its best the day it is made.
Angel food cake spread through American cookbooks in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, once fine bolted flour and reliable eggbeaters made a foam cake practical in a home kitchen. The full-size version calls for the whites of ten to twelve eggs and no fat at all, which put it firmly among the show cakes rather than the everyday ones; commercial bakers and better-off households could absorb the cost, and a scattering of egg-yolk recipes such as gold cake and boiled dressings grew up around the leftovers. A quarter recipe like this one belongs to the economy literature of the early twentieth century, when writers set out to bring prestige dishes within reach of a household counting eggs. The cream of tartar is doing real work: the acid stabilises the whites and keeps the crumb white rather than dull. The name itself is generally attributed to the cake's whiteness and lightness in general.