Gold Cake
4 teaspoons baking powder 1½ cups milk ¼ teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon lemon extract, or 1 teaspoon orange extract Follow directions for Butter Cake, and bake in loaves or rounds. ½ cup butter 2 cups sugar 2 cups pastry flour
The ingredient list has been jumbled in printing and one line is clearly corrupted; the method lives in the book's Butter Cake entry, so this page is a variation rather than a standalone recipe. A few things need sorting before you bake.
- The missing egg yolksThe missing eggs -- A gold cake is generally understood as a yolk cake, the counterpart to a silver or white cake made with whites. No eggs appear in the printed list, which looks like a typesetting loss; the eggs would come from the base Butter Cake entry, and for a gold cake the yolks would be used in place of whole eggs. The number is not recoverable from this page.
- "4 teaspoon salt"Almost certainly a misprint for ¼ teaspoon. Four teaspoons of salt in a two-cup-flour cake would be inedible, and period cake formulas of this type call for well under a teaspoon.
- Pastry flourPastry flour is softer and lower in protein than all-purpose. Substitute cake flour, or replace two tablespoons of each cup of all-purpose flour with cornstarch, for the fine close crumb the recipe expects.
- Baking powderFour teaspoons to two cups of flour is heavy by modern standards, and period powders were typically single-acting, with strength varying by brand. Two and a half to three teaspoons gives better flavor and less of a chemical aftertaste.
- Creaming orderA butter-cake method of this sort means creaming butter and sugar thoroughly, beating in the eggs, then adding flour and milk alternately; check the book's Butter Cake entry for the exact sequence. With this much sugar to butter the mixture will look sandy rather than fluffy — that is normal, but do not rush it.
- Oven and pansBake at 350F. Two 8-inch rounds take 25 to 30 minutes; a single loaf pan wants 50 to 60 minutes and should be tested with a skewer at the center.
- ExtractOne teaspoon of lemon or orange extract is the whole flavoring. Modern extracts are potent and consistent, so start there; grated zest can be added if you want a fresher note than an extract gives.
- YieldAbout twelve to sixteen servings from two rounds, or ten to twelve slices from a loaf.
Gold cake and silver cake were a matched pair born of thrift: a cook who used yolks in one cake needed somewhere for the whites, and vice versa, so nineteenth-century American books often printed the two together. Both are variations on the plain butter cake that anchors the baking chapter of a book like this " by by a change of eggs and a change of extract, which is why the compilers felt no need to repeat the method here. Lowney's Cook Book was published by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, and like other manufacturer-sponsored cookbooks of the era it surrounded its promotional chocolate recipes with a full working repertoire of household standards. The habit of splitting eggs between two cakes eventually faded, but the pale-and-golden pairing survived into mid-century layer cakes.