Almond Cake
Use rule for Silver Cake. Bake in shallow pan; sprinkle with powdered sugar and chopped almonds. Bake twenty to thirty minutes in moderate oven.
This is a variation rather than a standalone recipe: it borrows the batter from the book's Silver Cake and turns it into a shallow, nut-topped sheet cake. A few period conventions need translating before it will work.
- What Silver Cake meansA white butter cake leavened partly by stiffly beaten egg whites, with no yolks — hence "silver," as against the yolk-rich "gold" cake. Any modern white layer-cake batter made with whites only will behave the same way here.
- Moderate ovenConventionally taken as somewhere around 325-350F; the book gives no temperature. At the shallow depth called for, the cake sets before the almond topping can scorch; much hotter and the nuts will brown well ahead of the crumb.
- Shallow panRead as a sheet or jelly-roll depth, roughly an inch of batter; depending on how much batter the Silver Cake rule yields, a 9x13 or an 8-inch square. A deep pan will not bake through in the twenty to thirty minutes given.
- Powdered sugarIn American books of this date "powdered" often meant a fine-milled granulated sugar rather than today's cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar. Either works as a topping; confectioners' sugar will dissolve into the surface more, superfine will stay crisp and give a slight crust.
- Topping goes on before bakingThe sugar and almonds are sprinkled over the raw batter so they toast into the surface. Scatter them evenly and do not press them in, or they sink.
- AlmondsChopped rather than ground; the recipe does not say whether blanched. Perhaps half a cup for a 9x13. Sliced almonds are an acceptable substitute and toast more evenly.
- DonenessRely on the crumb, not the topping: the cake is done when it springs back and a tester comes out clean, usually nearer twenty-five minutes than thirty in a shallow pan.
- ServingCut in squares or fingers straight from the pan. It is a plain tea cake, not a frosted one; a 9x13 gives about twenty pieces.
Silver cake and gold cake were a matched pair in nineteenth-century American kitchens, and the usual explanation is thrift: a household that used a dozen whites for one cake needed something to do with a dozen yolks, and the two recipes were often printed near one another. Almond Cake here is simply Silver Cake given a topping, a common way of handling variations -- one master rule followed by short one-line departures. Lowney's Cook Book was published by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, and like other company-issued cookbooks of the era it mixed promotional chocolate recipes with a full general repertoire, which is why a plain almond tea cake sits in it at all.