Plain Cake
One-half cup butter, 2 cups sugar, 3 eggs, 1 cup milk, 3 cups flour, 1 tsp. soda and 2 tsp. Slade's cream tartar. Orange flavoring.
— Mrs. J. H. Proffit
A bare ingredient list in the church-cookbook manner, with the method assumed. It is a standard creamed butter cake, and it behaves like one.
- The leavening is homemade baking powder1 tsp soda with 2 tsp cream of tartar is the classic 1:2 ratio that yields roughly 3 teaspoons of single-acting baking powder. Sift both with the flour and get the batter into the oven promptly, since the reaction begins as soon as the milk hits it.
- Slade'sD. & L. Slade Co. of Boston sold cream of tartar and spices; the brand name is doing no work here. Any cream of tartar substitutes exactly, or use 3 to 4 tsp of modern double-acting baking powder and omit the soda.
- Method the recipe leaves outCream the butter and sugar until pale, beat in the eggs one at a time, then add the sifted dry ingredients alternately with the milk in three additions, beginning and ending with flour.
- Flour measurePeriod cups of soft winter-wheat flour were lighter than a modern scooped cup of all-purpose. Weigh 360 g and expect a slightly tender crumb; if you scoop, spoon the flour in and level it rather than packing.
- Sugar ratioTwo cups sugar to three of flour is sweet by current taste and gives a fine, close crumb. Reducing to 1 1/2 cups is safe; going lower changes the texture as well as the sweetness.
- Orange flavoringMost likely orange extract; about 1 tsp is a reasonable reading, though the recipe gives no quantity. The zest of one orange, rubbed into the sugar before creaming, gives a cleaner flavour if you prefer it.
- Pan and ovenEnough batter for two 8-inch layers or a 9x13 pan. Bake at 350F: about 25-30 minutes for layers, 35-40 for the sheet, until a tester comes out clean.
- What "plain" means hereNo fruit, no spice, no icing specified. Cake of this sort was commonly cut in squares and eaten with tea or coffee, and it takes a simple butter or orange glaze well.
Philathea classes were young women's Bible study groups attached to Baptist and other Protestant Sunday schools in the early twentieth century, and they raised money the way such groups everywhere did: by collecting the members' own recipes and selling them as a book. That origin explains the form of this page. Mrs. Proffit was writing for women who already knew how to make a cake and needed only the proportions, so the method is omitted entirely and the leavening is given as soda and cream of tartar rather than as baking powder, a habit that lingered in home kitchens long after commercial powders arrived. "Plain cake" is a category rather than a dish -- the undecorated everyday cake, distinguished in these books from the pound cakes, fruit cakes and layer cakes that got a name and an occasion.