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Hickory Nut Cake
1 cup butter. 7 egg whites. 3 cups flour. 2 cups sugar. 1 cup sweet milk. 3 level teaspoons baking powder.
One cup hickory nuts cut and dropped in after cake has been put in pan. Flavor with vanilla and orange.
An ingredient list in the older style, with the method left to the cook's judgment. Everything below fills in what the page assumes you already know.
- Oven and timeNo temperature or time is given, as is usual for ingredient-list recipes of this kind. A modern reconstruction: bake at around 350F, allowing 25-30 minutes for two 9-inch layers or 50-60 minutes for a tube pan, tested with a skewer in the thickest part.
- Sweet milkThis means ordinary fresh whole milk, specified only to distinguish it from the soured or buttermilk that recipes of the period often called for. No substitution is needed.
- Egg whitesSeven large whites come to roughly 1 cup, or 210 g. Beat them to soft peaks and fold them in last; whipped stiff they will streak and leave dry patches. Save the yolks for custard or mayonnaise.
- Mixing orderCream the butter with the sugar until pale, then add the flour sifted with the baking powder alternately with the milk, beginning and ending with flour. Fold in the whites at the end.
- The nuts go on topThe recipe does specify that the nuts go in after the batter is in the pan, which suggests they were meant to sit at the surface rather than be stirred through. Scatter them over the top and press them in lightly so they settle just below the surface.
- Flavoring quantitiesThe original gives none. About 1 teaspoon vanilla plus 1 teaspoon orange extract, or the grated zest of one orange, gives a reasonable balance without overwhelming the nuts.
- Hickory nutsShagbark and shellbark hickory nuts are rarely sold and are a chore to shell. Pecans are the closest relative and the standard stand-in; they are milder, so use the full cup.
- YieldThe quantities make a large cake: two or three 9-inch layers, or one 10-inch tube cake, serving 12 to 16. It keeps well wrapped for three days. A boiled white icing would suit it, though the recipe specifies none.
Hickory nuts come from trees native to eastern North America, and for most of the nineteenth century they were gathered rather than bought, which is why they turn up so often in American cake and cookie recipes and almost never in English ones. This is a white cake in the older sense, built on egg whites alone for a pale crumb, a style that spread rapidly once cheap chemical baking powder became a pantry staple in the later 1800s and made the fine-textured layer cake easy for a home cook. The orange-and-vanilla pairing was a common way to lift a butter cake.