Spice Cake
2 cups flour 3 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon cinnamon teaspoon nutmeg teaspoon clove Mix and sift dry ingredients, add butter, sugar, eggs, and milk, and beat until smooth. Bake in a moderate oven forty minutes. One cup chopped raisins, or one cup chopped dates may be added to this cake. ½ cup butter 1 cup sugar 2 egg yolks ½ cup milk 2 egg whites
A plain creamed-butter spice cake of the early 1900s, printed in the compressed style of the period: the method comes first and the ingredient list trails after it. Read both before starting.
- The garbled quantitiesThe transcription drops the fractions before nutmeg and clove. Comparable spice cakes of the period commonly run to something like 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg and 1/4 teaspoon clove; clove is the most aggressive of the three and is usually kept the smallest.
- Actual order of workAs printed the method says only to add butter, sugar, eggs and milk and beat until smooth, but the ingredient list separates the two yolks from the two whites, which points to the usual period handling: cream the 1/2 cup butter with the sugar, beat in the egg yolks, add the sifted dry ingredients alternately with the 1/2 cup milk, and fold in the stiffly beaten whites at the end.
- Moderate ovenThe book gives no temperature; 'moderate' is conventionally read as roughly 350-375F. Forty minutes at the lower end suits one 8-inch square or a small loaf; two thin layers will be done considerably sooner.
- Butter and milkBoth should be at room temperature. Cold butter will not take up air with the sugar, and cold milk will curdle the creamed mixture.
- Baking powderThree teaspoons to two cups of flour is heavy by modern standards, roughly half again today's usual ratio, and is typical of leavening levels in recipes of this date. Two teaspoons of modern double-acting powder gives a better crumb and no soapy aftertaste.
- FlourPeriod flour is often said to have been softer than today's all-purpose. For a more tender cake, replace two tablespoons of each cup of flour with cornstarch, or use cake flour and sift as directed.
- The fruit optionIf adding the cup of chopped raisins or dates, toss them with a spoonful of the measured flour first so they do not sink, and expect an extra five minutes in the oven.
- YieldAbout nine to twelve squares. It keeps well for two or three days wrapped, and the spice comes forward on the second day.
Lowney's Cook Book (1907) was written by Maria Willett Howard for the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, and like most maker-sponsored cookbooks of the era it surrounded its promotional chocolate recipes with a full range of ordinary household baking. A spice cake such as this one is the plainest sort of American layer-or-loaf cake: butter, sugar, eggs, milk, chemical leavening, and the trio of cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove that had long been standard in New England baking. The optional cup of raisins or dates is the tell of a pre-refrigeration pantry, where dried fruit was the reliable way to make a cake feel richer without adding cost. The eggs are separated, with the whites folded in last.