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Mixing Sponge Cake
Beat yolks of eggs until lemon-colored and thick; add sugar and continue beating; add flour; when well blended, cut and fold in the stiffly beaten whites of eggs. Pour into buttered and papered pan; bake in a round pan with a tube in the center.
This is a method note rather than a full formula — it describes the order of operations for a true sponge cake without giving quantities, which the book supplies in its neighboring recipes. Read it as the technique that governs every foam cake in the chapter.
- No quantities are givenThe original lists no amounts at all, so this page cannot be followed on its own. A conventional sponge of the period runs to about 6 eggs, 1 cup sugar and 1 cup flour, but that is a reconstruction, not what the book says here; pair the method with a measured recipe.
- The hinge: fold, do not stir"Cut and fold" means a spatula down through the center, across the bottom, and up the side, rotating the bowl. Every stroke that stirs rather than folds collapses the whites, and a sponge with no chemical leavening or fat has nothing else holding it up.
- Beat the yolks properly"Lemon-colored and thick" is the recipe's own endpoint, not just a colour note; in a modern mixer that is several minutes of beating, until the yolks fall in a ribbon. The recipe does not say how to add the sugar; adding it gradually is modern practice rather than an instruction here.
- Flour before the whitesFlour is blended into the sweetened yolks first, then the whites lighten the whole. Adding it in two or three additions helps ensure no dry pockets survive, since you cannot beat them out later.
- Papered pan"Buttered and papered" means a butter film with a fitted round of paper on the bottom — parchment now, where the original would have used ordinary kitchen paper.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature or time. Sponge cakes of this type are usually baked in a moderate oven, around 325 to 350F in modern terms, with a tube pan taking roughly 40 to 50 minutes; it is done when the top springs back and a skewer in the thickest part comes out clean.
- CoolingInvert the pan and let the cake hang until fully cold, then loosen and turn out. Unmoulding or cutting while warm can leave the centre sunken and dense.
- YieldSince no quantities are given, yield cannot be read from the page; a batter of this kind baked in a 9- to 10-inch tube pan would give roughly 10 to 12 servings. A fat-free sponge is lean, and such cakes were commonly served with fruit, whipped cream, or a sauce.
The tube pan in the last line is the whole point of the instruction: a chimney through the center puts hot air where a fat-free batter is slowest to set, and the tall walls give the foam something to climb. Such a pan is often said to have been assumed by American cookbooks for sponge and angel cakes from the late nineteenth century onward, though how widely is uncertain. Lowney's book was published as a promotional volume by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, and pages like this one exist to teach the plain foundation cakes that the book's chocolate frostings, fillings and sauces were meant to dress.