Home › Cakes › Chocolate Sour-Milk Cake
Chocolate Sour-Milk Cake
1/2 cup butter or shortening 1 cup sugar 3 eggs 1/2 cup sour milk 2 cups flour 1/3 teaspoon soda 1/3 cup hot water 1 square chocolate Cream butter or shortening and sugar; add eggs well beaten, and the milk. Add sifted flour. Dissolve the soda in the hot water and add grated chocolate to this mixture. Beat the mixture smooth and put in a well-greased loaf pan. Bake in a moderate oven (380 degrees F.) for forty-five minutes.
A plain one-bowl loaf cake from the era when sour milk was a daily reality rather than a shopping decision. The method is straightforward, but two of the quantities are worth pausing over before you start.
- Sour milkThis means naturally soured raw milk, mildly acidic and slightly thickened. The standard substitute is 1/2 cup whole milk with 1 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice or white vinegar stirred in and left ten minutes; plain buttermilk works equally well and is closer in body.
- The soda is lowOne-third teaspoon is a small amount of leavening for two cups of flour, and the recipe includes no baking powder. Some comparable sour-milk recipes call for a half to a full teaspoon. Expect a dense, close-grained loaf as written.
- One square chocolateA "square" is one ounce of unsweetened baking chocolate. Grating it, as directed, lets it melt in the hot water; chopping it fine does the same job faster.
- Order of mixingThe chocolate, soda and hot water are combined separately and then beaten into the finished batter. Do it last and work quickly, since the soda begins reacting with the sour milk the moment they meet.
- Oven380F is as printed and is workable. 350F to 375F in a modern oven gives much the same result; check at forty minutes with a skewer.
- Pan and yieldThe recipe specifies only a well-greased loaf pan; a 9 by 5 inch pan suits this quantity of batter. One loaf. Let it settle in the pan a few minutes before turning out.
- FinishingNo frosting is given. A dusting of confectioners' sugar suits the loaf shape; a thin boiled or fudge icing is one period-appropriate option.
Sour-milk cakes belong to the long stretch of American baking before refrigeration, when milk left standing soured predictably and cooks built recipes around it rather than throwing it out. The acid reacts with baking soda to lift the batter, a system that predates commercial baking powder and continued in home kitchens alongside it. Unsweetened baking chocolate was commonly sold in one-ounce squares, which is why recipes of this period are often measured in "squares" rather than ounces. The New Delineator Recipes was published under the imprint of Butterick's Delineator magazine.