Pound Cake
10 eggs 1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg 2 teaspoons vanilla Beat the butter and sugar to a cream; add the yolks of the eggs beaten light; then beat the whites to a stiff froth and add them alternately with the flour; flavor; put in two deep, buttered pans and bake in a moderate oven from forty to fifty minutes. 1 pound butter 1 pound sugar 1 pound flour 5 eggs
The page as printed runs two versions of the same cake together: a half-pound-each formula with five eggs, and a doubled set of flavorings and eggs above it. Read the weights first, then decide which batch you are making.
- The hinge: no leavening at allThere is no baking powder or soda here. Every bit of lift comes from air beaten into the butter and sugar and from the stiffly whipped whites, so cream the butter and sugar a full five minutes until visibly pale, and fold the whites and flour in alternately with a light hand rather than stirring them down.
- Weights in cups1/2 lb butter is 2 sticks (1 cup); 1/2 lb granulated sugar is a generous 1 cup; 1/2 lb all-purpose flour is about 2 cups sifted. Weighing is better than measuring here, since the whole structure of the cake depends on the three being equal.
- Moderate ovenConventionally read today as about 350F; the recipe itself gives no temperature. Expect the longer end of the forty-to-fifty-minute range for a deep pan, and test with a skewer in the center.
- Egg sizeEggs in older recipes may have run somewhat smaller than today's large, though this varied. If you are using large or extra-large eggs, err on the fewer side so the batter does not slacken.
- Butter temperatureThe butter must be at cool room temperature, around 65F, to hold air when creamed. Softened to the point of greasiness it will not aerate, and the cake bakes dense and heavy.
- Pans"Two deep, buttered pans" means loaf pans or deep round tins, buttered and floured, or lined with parchment. Fill no more than two-thirds; this batter rises slowly but steadily.
- Yield and keepingPound cake improves after a day wrapped tightly, and it toasts well once it begins to dry.
The name is a plain description of the formula: a pound of butter, a pound of sugar, a pound of flour and a pound of eggs, a ratio recorded in English cookery books from the eighteenth century and carried into American ones — Amelia Simmons's American Cookery of 1796 includes it. A scheme of equal weights could be worked with a balance and one known weight rather than written measures. Here the pounds are halved and the eggs counted rather than weighed.