Cake, Nice Useful
1/4 lb. of sugar, INGREDIENTS. lb. of butter, 6 oz. of currants, lb. of sugar, 1 lb. of dried flour, 2 teaspoonfuls of baking-powder, 3 eggs, 1 teacupful of milk, 2 oz. of sweet almonds, 1 oz. of candied peel. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 4d.
Beat the butter to a cream; wash, pick, and dry the currants; whisk the eggs; blanch and chop the almonds, and cut the peel into neat slices. When all these are ready, mix the dry ingredients together; then add the butter, milk and eggs, and beat the mixture well for a few minutes. Put the cake into a buttered tin or mould, and bake it for rather more SPONGE CAKE. than 1 hour. The currants and candied peel may be omitted, and a litle lemon or almond flavouring substituted for them; made in this manner, the cake will be found very good.
TIME. Rather more than 1½ hour.
Cake, Pavini. INGREDIENTS.lb. of flour, lb. of ground rice, lb. of raisins stoned and cut into small pieces, 1/4 lb. of currants, 1/4 lb. of butter, 2 oz. of sweet almonds, 1/4 lb. of sifted loaf sugar, a little nutmeg grated, 1 pint of milk, 1 teaspoonful of carbonate of soda. AVERAGE Cost, 1s. 6d.
Stone and cut the raisins into small pieces: wash, pick, and dry the currants; melt the butter to a cream, but without oiling it; blanch and chop the almonds, and grate the nutmeg. When all these ingredients are thus prepared, mix them well together; make the milk warm, stir in the soda, and with this liquid make the whole into a paste. Butter a mould, rather more CAKE, PLAIN. than half fill it with the dough, and bake the cake in a moderate oven from 1 to 2 hours, or less time should it be made into two cakes.
TIME.-1 to 2 hours.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Two plain family cakes of the Beeton type: heavy with dried fruit, leavened chemically, and baked long and slow. Several of the quantities have lost their fractions in this printing, so treat the proportions below as guidance rather than gospel.
- The missing fractionsBoth ingredient lists give bare "lb." where a fraction has dropped out. The lost figures were most likely quarter- or half-pounds, but this printing does not preserve them and the proportions cannot be recovered from the text. Weigh by a modern recipe of similar type rather than guessing from the text as printed.
- Conflicting bake timesThe first cake is told to bake "rather more than 1 hour" in the method and "rather more than 1½ hour" in the time line. For a 1 lb-flour fruit cake in a deep tin, the longer figure is the realistic one; test with a skewer from 75 minutes.
- Oven heatThe Pavini is the only one of the two given an oven: a "moderate" one, which for a cake of this size is taken as roughly 325-350F (160-175C). The first cake is given no oven heat at all. Cover the top with paper once it has coloured.
- Dried flour"Dried flour" meant flour warmed by the fire to drive off damp, a real concern in a stone larder. Modern bagged flour needs nothing done to it; sift it and carry on.
- Carbonate of soda aloneThe Pavini cake uses soda with no acid ingredient beyond the milk. Plain fresh milk is barely acidic enough to neutralise it, and the cake can taste soapy. Buttermilk or soured milk gives the reaction the recipe assumes; a teaspoon of baking powder is the simpler substitution.
- Teacupful and loaf sugarA Victorian teacupful is reckoned variously at about 5-7 fl oz, so somewhere near 3/4 US cup. Sifted loaf sugar is sugar broken from a cone and passed through a sieve; caster sugar is the nearest equivalent.
- Butter "melted to a cream"The Pavini instruction means softened to the texture of thick cream over gentle warmth, not melted to liquid. If it oils, the fat separates and the crumb turns greasy and dense.
- AlmondsSweet almonds are ordinary blanched almonds. Blanch by pouring boiling water over them, slipping off the skins, then chopping; ready-blanched almonds save the step.
- Tin and yieldNeither cake specifies a tin. A 7-inch round deep tin, buttered and lined, suits the first. The Pavini takes a pint of milk to its dry ingredients and may be easier split between two tins, which the recipe itself allows: "less time should it be made into two cakes."
These are cakes from the plainer end of the Victorian repertoire, priced at 1s 4d and 1s 6d. Both belong to the tradition of the fruited "family cake": no creaming ritual, no icing, just butter, dried fruit, and a chemical raising agent. The Pavini cake's use of ground rice alongside wheat flour was a common economy that also gives a short, slightly sandy crumb, and the name itself is obscure - such cakes were frequently christened after a singer, a spa or a patron with no recorded connection to the recipe. The note that currants and peel "may be omitted" with lemon or almond flavouring put in their place is characteristic of the book: one formula, adjustable to what the store cupboard held.