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Cold Water Sponge Cake
grated rind and juice of lemon ½ cup cold water 3 cups flour 3 teaspoons baking powder + teaspoon salt Beat yolks of eggs until lemon-colored and thick; add sugar, rind and juice of lemon, water, flour in which salt and baking powder has been sifted. When well blended, cut and fold in the beaten whites of eggs. Bake in two pans thirty to forty minutes. 1 cup sugar ½ cup water 5 egg yolks
The ingredient list has been scrambled in this printing — sugar, water and yolks appear at the end, and the whites are never counted — so read the whole thing through before starting. What follows resolves the ambiguities and supplies the oven heat the original omits.
- Reconstructing the listThe workable reading is 5 egg yolks (plus their whites), 1 cup sugar, ½ cup cold water, the grated rind and juice of one lemon, 3 cups flour, 3 teaspoons baking powder and about ½ teaspoon salt. Note that water is listed twice in the printing ("½ cup cold water" and "½ cup water"); most likely the same half cup duplicated in the scramble, though a full cup cannot be ruled out. The "+ teaspoon salt" is a broken fraction, probably ¼ or ½ teaspoon.
- Flour to egg ratioThree cups of flour against five eggs and one cup of sugar is heavy for a sponge, and other cold-water sponge recipes often call for less flour. If the batter seems stiff rather than pourable, the flour may have been measured scooped and packed; spoon it into the cup and level it.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Bake at 350F; a sponge this size wants a moderate oven, and anything hotter sets the crust before the crumb has risen.
- Egg whitesBeat the whites to soft, glossy peaks, not dry and crumbly. Dry whites break into lumps that never disperse and leave white streaks and tunnels in the baked crumb.
- Cut and foldThis is the hinge of the recipe. The only leavening beyond the baking powder is air held in the whites, so add them in two or three additions with a wide spatula, cutting down through the batter and turning it over. Stirring collapses the foam and gives a dense, rubbery cake.
- The pans"Two pans" is left unspecified; two 8- or 9-inch round layers or two loaf pans will both take the batter. Grease and flour them, or line the bottoms with parchment.
- Doneness and yieldThirty to forty minutes is right at 350F, but test rather than trust it: the top should spring back and a skewer come out clean. Two layers serve 10 to 12, and the cake is dry enough to want a lemon glaze, whipped cream or fruit.
Cold-water sponge cakes were a fixture of American household baking, and the name marks the point: cold water beaten into the yolks thins the batter and helps it expand in the oven, which let cooks stretch a few eggs further than the older egg-only sponges of the early nineteenth century. Chemical baking powder, cheap and reliable by the time this book was compiled, does the rest of the work that had nothing but beaten eggs behind it. Lowney's Cook Book was issued by the Walter M. Lowney Company of Boston, a chocolate and cocoa manufacturer, and like most maker-sponsored cookbooks of the era it wrapped a general household collection around the sponsor's products.