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White Cake No. 3
4 whites. 1/2 cup butter. 1 1/2 cups sugar. 2-3 cup milk. 2 1/2 cups flour. 2 teaspoons baking powder. Flavor to taste.
This is shorthand of the kind common in early-twentieth-century books: a proportion list, with the method assumed known. Here is what the list does not say.
- The missing methodCream the butter and sugar until pale and light, sift the flour with the baking powder, and add it alternately with the milk. Beat the whites to soft peaks separately and fold them in last, along with the flavoring; if the whites go in whole and unbeaten the crumb turns dense and slightly rubbery.
- "2-3 cup milk"This is 2/3 cup, a typesetting artifact where the fraction bar was lost. Two to three cups of milk in a batter carrying 2 1/2 cups of flour would be a pourable batter, not a cake.
- Egg whitesFour modern large whites give about 1/2 cup, which is what the proportions want; if your whites measure much more, hold some back rather than loosening the batter.
- OvenNo oven is given here. A butter cake of these proportions bakes at about 350F: two 8-inch layers take 25 to 30 minutes; a single loaf or 9-inch square wants 40 to 50.
- Flavor to tasteVanilla, or vanilla with a few drops of almond extract, about a teaspoon in total, suits a white cake. Do not use bitter almond preparations sold for other purposes.
- Butter and saltNo salt is listed. With unsalted butter add 1/4 teaspoon of salt to the flour.
- YieldEnough for two 8-inch layers, serving eight to ten. The four leftover yolks belong in a gold cake, custard, or mayonnaise.},{
White cake is defined by an absence: the yolks are left out so the crumb stays pale. Pale cakes of this kind became common in American cookbooks in the later nineteenth century, as refined sugar and chemical baking powder came within reach of ordinary households. By the time Mary A. Wilson, who wrote for the Ladies' Home Journal, assembled her cook book around 1920, a book of this sort commonly carried several numbered variants, along with the companion gold cake that used up the yolks. The numbering here, White Cake No. 3, reflects that habit of offering proportions a reader could compare and scale.