Lemon Cake
INGREDIENTS.- 8 eggs, 3 tablespoonfuls of orange-flower water, lb. of pounded loaf sugar, 1 lemon, lb. of flour. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 3d.
Separate the whites from the yolks of the eggs; whisk the former to a stiff froth. add the orange-flower water, the sugar grated lemon-rind and mix these ingredients well together. Then beat the yolks of the eggs and add them, with the lemonjuice, to the whites, &c.; dredge in the flour gradually; keep beating the mixture well; put it into a buttered mould and bake the cake about an hour, or rather longer. The addition of a little butter beaten to a cream, we think, would improve this cake.
TIME. About 1 hour.
SEASONABLE at any time.
LEMON CHEESECAKES.
A whisked sponge of the pre-baking-powder era: eight eggs, beaten in two stages, are the only leavening. The method is sound but the ingredient list has lost the fractions on its two weights, so the proportions have to be judged rather than read.
- The missing weightsBoth the sugar and the flour are given simply as "lb.", with the fraction gone. Comparable whisked cakes of the period run to something on the order of half to three-quarters of a pound of each against this many eggs, but nothing on the page recovers the original figures; treat any quantity as a reconstruction rather than the author's own.
- Loaf sugar, poundedLoaf sugar was refined sugar sold in a hard cone and broken up with a mallet, then pounded and sieved. Caster sugar is the direct modern equivalent and dissolves into the whisked whites more readily.
- Orange-flower waterStill sold, usually in small bottles from Middle Eastern grocers or the baking aisle. Modern distillates vary widely in strength; three tablespoons of a concentrated brand will dominate the lemon, so taste and scale back if unsure.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given; the recipe names no oven at all. As a modern equivalent, a moderate oven of around 325-350F for the stated hour or a little more suits a cake of this size. Too hot and the crust sets before the egg foam has finished rising.
- The hinge: don't knock the air outThere is no chemical raising agent, so everything depends on the whisked whites. Whip them to a stiff froth and get the cake into the oven at once. The recipe says to keep beating the mixture well as the flour goes in; a modern baker would fold rather than stir at that stage to keep the air in. "Dredge in the flour gradually" means sprinkling it over the surface in several additions.
- The mouldA buttered mould here means any plain metal or earthenware cake mould; butter it well and dust with flour or fine sugar, since a sponge with no fat in the batter grips the sides. An 8-inch round tin or a plain ring mould answers.
- Beeton's own amendmentThe note about a little butter beaten to a cream is the author's suggestion, not part of the recipe. Adding 2-3 oz of creamed butter softens the crumb and lengthens the keeping, but it also weighs down the foam, so fold it in last and very lightly.
- YieldEight eggs makes a substantial cake, comfortably 10 to 12 slices. It is best on the day it is baked; without butter it stales quickly.
Cakes raised on nothing but beaten egg were the height of English confectionery from the eighteenth century until chemical raising agents became household goods in the second half of the nineteenth, and this recipe belongs squarely to the older tradition. Orange-flower water, distilled from bitter-orange blossom, was the standard perfume of the English cake and biscuit before vanilla extract became cheap and widely available, and it appears throughout Beeton's baking chapters alongside rose water, ratafia and bitter almond. The "average cost, 1s. 3d." is characteristic of the book's whole purpose: Isabella Beeton's innovation in the 1861 Book of Household Management was not new recipes so much as new bookkeeping, with cost, timing and seasonality set out for the mistress of a household who was expected to account for every shilling. The candid aside about improving the cake with a little creamed butter is also typical of her voice, which frequently comments on a recipe rather than merely dictating it.