Eggless Cake
2 cups sugar. 1/2 cup crisco; pinch salt. 4 cups flour. 2 cups buttermilk. 2 teaspoons cinnamon. 1/4 teaspoon allspice. 1 teaspoon nutmeg. 1 lb. raisins seeded and cut. 3 teaspoons baking powder dissolved in 1 tablespoon of boiling water.
Flavor with orange and vanilla, blended.--Mrs. McKoin.
A wartime-style spice cake written in the shorthand of its day: ingredients listed, method assumed. Everything below fills in what Mrs. McKoin took for granted.
- No oven temperature is givenA dense fruited batter of this size wants a moderate oven, 325-350F. At 350F a tube pan runs about an hour, two loaf pans about 50-60 minutes; test with a skewer at the centre.
- The method is impliedCream the sugar and Crisco with the salt, add the buttermilk alternately with the sifted flour and spices, fold in the raisins, and stir in the dissolved baking powder last, then get it into the pan and the oven at once.
- Baking powder in boiling waterDissolving the powder in a spoonful of boiling water is a common instruction in recipes of this period. Modern double-acting powder does not require it; sift it with the flour instead.
- Buttermilk with no sodaThree teaspoons of powder for four cups of flour is modest, and there is no saleratus here to neutralise the buttermilk's acid. The result is likely to be a tangy, close-grained cake rather than a light one. Some comparable period recipes add a teaspoon of baking soda as well; if the crumb comes out tighter than you want, that is where it went.
- CriscoIntroduced in 1911 and the standard hydrogenated shortening of the era. Half a cup is about 4 oz / 100 g. Any solid vegetable shortening works; butter will make a richer, less tender cake.
- Seeded raisins"Seeded and cut" means raisins still containing pips, typically the larger muscat sort, which had to be stoned by hand. A pound of seedless raisins, roughly 3 cups, replaces them directly. Toss them in a spoonful of the measured flour so they do not sink.
- Flavouring quantities"Orange and vanilla, blended" is left entirely to the cook. A teaspoon of vanilla with the grated zest of one orange, or a teaspoon each of the two extracts, sits comfortably against the spice.
- Yield and keepingFour cups of flour and a pound of fruit make a large cake: one 10-inch tube pan or two standard loaves, 16 to 20 slices. Eggless spice cakes of this type keep well, and improve wrapped for a day or two.
Eggless, butterless, milkless cakes flooded American cookbooks during and just after the First World War, when eggs and dairy fat were conserved for shipment abroad and the Food Administration pressed households toward substitutes; buttermilk, molasses, spices and a heavy hand with raisins carried the flavour that eggs and butter otherwise would. Crisco, on the market since 1911, appears here as casually as flour. The recipe's credit to Mrs. McKoin marks it as a contributed household formula rather than a tested kitchen original, which is consistent with the missing oven temperature and the absent method.