Rice Cake
INGREDIENTS for goodsized cake. lb. of ground rice, lb. of flour, 1/2 lb. of loaf sugar, 9 eggs, 20 drops of essence of lemon, or the rind of 1 lemon, 1/4 lb. of butter. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 6d.
Separate the whites from the yolks of the eggs: whisk them both well, and add to the latter the butter beaten to a cream. in the flour, rice and lemon (if the rind is used it must be very finely minced), and beat the mixture well; then add the whites of the eggs, beat the cake again for some time, put it into Stir firm. If laurel-leaves are used for flavouring, steep 3 of them in the milk, and take them out before the rice is added; about ❘ a buttered mould or tin, 8 drops of essence of almonds, or from 12 to 16 drops of essence of vanilla, would be required to flavour the above proportion of milk.
TIME. From 10 to 15 minutes to boil the rice.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A large egg-raised sponge stiffened with ground rice, from the era before baking powder was standard in English cake-making. The proportions as printed have lost several of their fractions, so read the weights with care before you begin.
- The missing fractionsThe quantities for the ground rice, the flour and the butter have come through incomplete, so the exact amounts are not recoverable from this text alone. Beeton's cakes of this type are generally built on equal weights of ground rice, flour and sugar with butter at about half that weight; treat any figure you settle on as your own reconstruction rather than the book's.
- Ground riceGround rice is rice milled to a fine, slightly gritty flour, sold today as rice flour or ground rice in the baking aisle. It contains no gluten, which is what gives this cake its short, sandy crumb rather than a bready one.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar came as a hard cone that the cook broke up and pounded. Use caster sugar, which dissolves into the yolks and butter far more readily than the granulated equivalent.
- The hinge: the eggs are the only leaveningNine eggs, whisked separately and folded in, carry the whole rise. Whisk the whites to a firm but not dry peak and fold them in with a light hand at the end; the instruction to "beat the cake again for some time" after adding them will knock the air out and give a flat, close cake.
- Oven and baking timeThe timing printed here covers only the boiling of the rice; no oven heat or baking time is given anywhere in this text. As a starting point a cake of this size might be baked at around 325-350F and will likely need somewhere in the region of an hour and a quarter, but you will have to judge it yourself, testing with a skewer at the centre. Cover the top loosely with paper if it colours before the middle is set.
- FlavouringEssence of lemon was a strong oil-based extract; 20 drops is around a scant quarter teaspoon of modern lemon extract, or use the finely grated zest of one lemon instead. Grating is easier and cleaner than the mincing the original calls for.
- The tinButter the mould well and dust it with flour or a little of the ground rice, and line the base with paper as well.
- Yield and keepingA cake on this scale should give something like 12 to 16 slices. It is drier than a modern butter cake and suits thin slicing; it keeps three or four days well wrapped.
Ground rice was a Victorian kitchen staple, cheap, shelf-stable and useful for puddings, moulds and cakes alike, and cooks valued it in baking for the fine close crumb it gave where wheat flour alone would have been springier. A cake like this one belongs to the tradition of egg-raised batters that predates the general adoption of baking powder in British households in the second half of the nineteenth century: the labour of whisking nine eggs by hand, whites and yolks apart, is the entire mechanism of the rise, and the long beating the recipe calls for reflects a period when a strong arm was cheaper than a chemical. The average cost of 1s. 6d. was Beeton's way of letting a household budget the dish.