Bride's Cake
1 cup shortening 2 cups sugar 1/2 teaspoon almond or vanilla extract 3/4 cup milk 3 1/2 cups flour 3 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder whites of six eggs Beat shortening to a cream, adding sugar gradually; add flavoring extract; beat until smooth. Add alternately a little at a time milk and flour which has been sifted three times with baking powder. Beat whites of eggs until dry, and add to batter, folding in very lightly without beating. Bake in greased loaf pan in moderate oven about one hour.
A plain white cake in the old style, leavened partly by baking powder and partly by stiffly beaten whites. The batter is stiff and the folding is where it succeeds or fails.
- "Beat whites until dry"Ignore this literally. Whites beaten past firm peaks turn grainy and break down, and they will not fold in without deflating. Take them to stiff but still glossy peaks, then fold in three additions with a spatula, cutting down and turning over rather than stirring.
- Moderate ovenThe book gives no temperature; moderate is conventionally taken as 350-375F. A loaf this deep needs the full hour or a little more; test with a skewer in the centre and check at 55 minutes.
- ShorteningIn a Royal book of this era this means any solid fat — butter, lard, or the newer hydrogenated vegetable shortening. Butter gives the best flavour; all-vegetable shortening gives the whiter crumb the name implies.
- FlourSifting three times was for lump-prone, coarser flour of the period and to aerate it. Modern all-purpose needs one sifting with the baking powder, but it is also stronger, so measure by weight if you can: 3 1/2 cups is roughly 15 oz / 425 g. Cake flour gives a tenderer result closer to what was intended.
- Egg whitesSix large whites is about 3/4 cup / 180 ml. Have them at room temperature; cold whites take longer to whip and hold less air.
- PanThis is a large quantity of batter, likely more than a single modern 9x5-inch loaf pan will hold. Divide between two 9x5-inch loaf pans, or a 9-inch round pan plus a small loaf, and grease them. Divided this way, bake 45-55 minutes.
- Almond extractHalf a teaspoon of almond in this quantity of batter is restrained and correct; modern almond extract is potent and more will taste medicinal.
- YieldAbout 20 slices from the two loaves. The cake keeps well wrapped for three or four days and was traditionally iced with a plain white boiled or royal icing.
Bride's cake in American usage generally denotes the white cake, made with egg whites only for a pale crumb, as distinct from the dark fruit "groom's cake" sent home with guests in boxes; the naming was not consistent across sources. The whiteness was the whole point -- a cake that used only whites, white sugar and white flour advertised both purity as a symbol and expense as a fact, since separating six eggs meant finding some other use for six yolks in the same day's cooking. Its appearance in a Royal Baking Powder booklet is straightforwardly commercial: these small books were given away to move tins of powder, and a cake that leans on both beaten whites and three teaspoons of chemical leavening demonstrates the product in the most flattering possible setting. Recipes of this shape circulated widely in American cookbooks from the late nineteenth century onward under names like white cake, silver cake and bride's cake, the last two often differing only in the size of the pan and the icing on top.