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Apricot Shortcake
1 quart canned apricots 1/3 cup butter 2 egg whites 1/2 cup milk 1 teaspoon salt 2 cups flour 4 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 cup sugar Sift the flour, salt and baking powder together. Beat the egg whites. Add the milk. Turn this mixture into the dry ingredients. Mix all together thoroughly. Add the melted butter, and bake in an oblong pan. When done, remove from the oven, split, and spread on the freshly cut surface one-half of the apricots from which the juice has been drained. On top of this place the other half with the freshly cut surface on top. On this arrange the remaining half of the apricots. If a richer cake is desired, the freshly cut surface may be spread with softened butter before adding the apricots. Serve with this a sauce made by adding the sugar to the juice drained from the apricots. Boil from five to ten minutes, and serve over each individual portion of the short-cake. A spoonful of whipped cream served on each portion is a pleasant addition. Shortcake should not be put together until just before it is to be served as the juices from the fruit will make the cake soggy.
A biscuit-style shortcake baked as a single sheet, split and layered with drained canned apricots. The original gives no oven temperature, pan size or baking time, so those are the gaps worth filling before you start.
- Oven and panNo temperature, time or pan size is given. A hot oven, around 425F for 20 to 25 minutes until the top is golden and firm, is a reasonable modern equivalent; "oblong pan" is unspecified, and something in the region of 8x12 inches will take this quantity. The batter is stiff and will need spreading into the corners.
- A quart of canned apricotsRoughly 4 cups of fruit and syrup, about two 15-oz cans or one large can. Drain them well and keep the syrup for the sauce.
- The egg whitesWhites only, with no yolks anywhere in the recipe. The recipe says merely "beat the egg whites": since they are thinned with milk immediately afterwards and the 4 teaspoons of baking powder do the lifting, there is no need to take them to stiff peaks.
- Butter added lastMelted butter goes in after the batter is mixed, which is unusual but deliberate; stir it through quickly and stop as soon as it disappears. Overworking after the butter is in gives a tough, bready crumb.
- SaltA full teaspoon in two cups of flour is on the high side by current taste, especially as the dough itself is unsweetened (the sugar goes into the sauce). Half a teaspoon suits most modern palates.
- The sauceSugar plus the drained syrup, boiled 5 to 10 minutes, reduces to a thin pouring syrup rather than a glaze. Watch it near the end — apricot syrup catches quickly once it thickens.
- The hingeThe last line of the recipe is the important one. Split, fill and stack only at the moment of serving; a sheet shortcake sitting under wet fruit for even twenty minutes goes soggy at the seam and cannot be rescued.
- YieldCut into 8 to 10 squares, each split and layered. Whipped cream, offered here as optional, is what most modern eaters will assume is standard.
Shortcake in American cookbooks of this period is a split biscuit dough, not a sponge and not the sweetened cake sold in supermarkets today, and it was made with whatever fruit the season or the pantry offered — strawberries in June, canned peaches or apricots the rest of the year. Its appearance in a book of meatless cookery, filed under "Whites of Eggs," points to the practical problem that follows any recipe calling for yolks alone, such as custard or mayonnaise. Canned apricots made the dish possible in winter; commercial canning of California apricots was well established by then, and a quart jar or tin was an ordinary store-cupboard item rather than a luxury.