Sprats, Dried
Dried sprats should Boil the sugar and water together until they form a thick syrup; let it cool a little, then pour it to the eggs, which should be previously well whisked; and after the eggs and syrup are mixed together, con- be put into a basin, and boiling water tinue beating them for a few minutes.
Grate the lemon-rind, mix the carbonate of soda with the flour, and stir these lightly to the other ingredients; then add the lemon-juice, and, when the whole is thoroughly mixed, pour it into a buttered mould, and bake in rather a quick oven for rather more than 1 hour. The remains of sponge or Savoy cakes answer very well for trifles, light puddings, &c.; and a very stale one (if not mouldy) makes an excellent tipsy cake.
TIME. Rather more than 1 hour.
SEASONABLE at any time.
This page is a printing accident: the heading and opening words belong to an entry on dried sprats, while the body is the tail end of a sponge-cake recipe that has been set into it, with a line of the sprat entry ("be put into a basin, and boiling water") wedged mid-sentence. What survives is usable as a sponge method, but not as a complete recipe.
- Read it as two entriesEverything from "Boil the sugar and water" onward is a sponge cake made by the boiled-syrup method. The sprat entry has lost all but its first four words and the fragment about a basin and boiling water, which was most likely the instruction to pour boiling water over the dried sprats to soften and freshen them.
- No quantities surviveSugar, water, eggs, flour, lemon and soda are all named but none is measured. Anything you assemble here is a reconstruction, not this recipe.
- Carbonate of sodaSodium bicarbonate, sold today as baking soda. In a batter this acidic it will act, but the lift in a boiled-syrup sponge comes overwhelmingly from the whisked eggs; the soda is insurance.
- "Rather a quick oven"Victorian usage generally puts a quick oven somewhere around 400-450F, though the equivalences given in period sources vary. That is hot for a large egg sponge held for an hour; a modern reading of 325-350F is the safer bet.
- The hinge: temper the syrupThe book says to let the syrup cool a little before it goes to the well-whisked eggs. Poured boiling hot it risks setting the eggs, and the sponge will suffer for it.
- "Buttered mould"The book specifies nothing beyond that the mould be buttered. A sponge this delicate needs the mould well greased if it is to come out whole.
- Dried spratsThese were sold salted and air-dried or smoked, and were scalded before eating. Smoked sprats or brisling are the nearest thing on a modern counter, and need no soaking.
Sprats are small clupeids, cousins to the herring, and for most of the nineteenth century they were the cheapest fish in London: landed in huge winter shoals, hawked by the bushel, and preserved by salting and drying when they could not be sold fresh. Their appearance in a household encyclopaedia alongside sponge cake is the point of a book like this one, which was arranged as an alphabetical dictionary rather than by course, so that a shilling supper of dried fish and a party cake sat on the same page.