Lady Cake
6 ounces butter 1 cup powdered sugar 1/4 cup milk 1/2 teaspoon almond extract Whites of 3 eggs 1½ cups flour 2 teaspoons baking powder Beat the butter to a cream; add the sugar gradually, then the flavoring and milk and the beaten whites alternately with the sifted flour and baking powder.
A white butter cake in the old style, written for cooks who already knew what pan to use and how hot to build the fire. The gaps are all at the end.
- "Powdered sugar" is not confectioners' sugarIn American books of this vintage powdered sugar means finely ground granulated sugar, not the cornstarch-cut icing sugar sold today. Superfine (caster) sugar is the closest match; ordinary granulated will work with longer creaming.
- Butter by weightSix ounces is one and a half sticks, 170 g. Have it genuinely soft, around 65F, or it will not take the sugar.
- Baking powderTwo teaspoons to a cup and a half of flour is a touch brisk by current standards but produces the fine, high crumb the recipe is after. Use double-acting powder and do not let the batter stand once it is mixed.
- The whitesBeat them to soft peaks, not stiff and dry, and alternate them with the flour as directed rather than folding everything in at the end. Dry whites break into curds and leave streaks in a pale cake where they show.
- No oven temperature is givenA cake of this size belongs in a moderate oven, 350F. Baking slower, around 325F, gives a paler crust, which suits a cake meant to stay white.
- Pan and timeThe quantity fills one 8-inch round or a small loaf pan. Figure 30 to 35 minutes in a round, 45 to 50 in a loaf, until a skewer comes out clean and the cake pulls slightly from the sides.
- Almond extractHalf a teaspoon is the whole flavour of the cake, so use a real extract rather than an imitation if you can. Period recipes sometimes called for bitter almond or rose water in its place; modern extract is the sensible substitute.
- YieldEight to ten slices. It is a plain cake by design and expects a white icing or a dusting of sugar.
Lady cake belongs to a family of nineteenth-century American cakes sorted by colour: the whites of the eggs went into lady cake or silver cake, the yolks into gold cake, and a cook who made both on the same day wasted nothing. Almond was a common flavouring, and the pallor was the point — a white cake was a display of good flour, fresh butter and refined sugar, all of them things a household paid for. Recipes under this name run through American cookbooks from the mid-1800s onward, and by the time Mrs. Fryer was writing, chemical baking powder had replaced the older reliance on beaten whites alone for lift — which may help explain why this version needs only three eggs where earlier ones might call for eight or ten, though the connection is a matter of inference rather than documented practice.