Blueberry Cake
Beat 1/2 cup butter and 1 cup of sugar together, add 1/4 cup milk, yolks of two eggs beaten light, also beat the whites to a stiff froth; 1/2 tsp. Slade's nutmeg, 1/2 tsp. Slade's cinnamon, 1 tsp. Royal baking powder, 1¼ cups of flour. Roll one pint of berries in flour and add last. Pour into pan about one inch deep and dust top with sugar. Better one day old.
— Mrs. Albert Tattersall
A plain butter cake carrying a heavy load of berries, written for a cook who already knew how her stove behaved. The gaps worth filling are the oven, the pan and the fact that the beaten whites are never actually told to go in.
- The whites go in last, foldedThe instructions have you beat the whites stiff and then never mention them again. Fold them in gently after the flour and before the berries; with only a quarter cup of milk they are a good part of the cake's lift and lightness.
- Oven and timeNo temperature is given. A cake of this type belongs in a moderate oven, 350F, for about 30 to 35 minutes at a one-inch depth, until a tester comes out clean.
- Pan size"About one inch deep" describes the batter, not the tin. An 8-inch square pan or a 9-inch round takes this quantity to roughly that depth.
- A pint of berriesA dry pint is about two cups, or 10 to 12 ounces. That is a large proportion against 1 1/4 cups of flour, which is why they must be tossed in flour first, and why the batter will look barely able to hold them.
- Slade's spices, Royal baking powderD. & L. Slade Co. of Boston was a spice packer whose name turns up constantly in New England church cookbooks; any good ground nutmeg and cinnamon will do. Royal was a cream-of-tartar baking powder, single-acting, so get the pan into the oven promptly once the powder is wet.
- Frozen berriesIf using frozen blueberries, keep them frozen and toss them in the flour straight from the freezer, or the juice will streak the batter grey.
- The sugar on topDusting the surface with granulated sugar before baking gives a thin crisp crust. Coarse or sanding sugar holds its texture better than fine.
- Yield and keepingTwelve to sixteen squares. The note that it is "better one day old" is sound: wrapped at room temperature overnight the crumb settles and moistens from the fruit.
The Philathea classes were adult Bible study groups for young women, the female counterpart to the Baraca classes for men, and the movement spread widely through American Protestant churches in the first decades of the twentieth century. Their cookbooks worked the same way as every other church fundraiser of the period: each contributor signed her recipe. The brand names embedded in the instructions, Slade's spices and Royal baking powder, are typical of the era, when packers courted such books. Blueberry cake itself is a New England household staple rather than a dish with an inventor, built on whatever the summer picking brought in, and the closing note that it is better a day old is the kind of practical observation that only ever survives in books like this one.