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Sour Milk Spice Cake
1 tsp. soda (even) 1/2 tsp. salt 1 cup sugar 1/3 cup butter 1 egg 2/3 cup sour milk 2 cups flour 1/2 tsp. Slade's cinnamon 1/2 tsp. Slade's cloves 1/2 tsp. Slade's nutmeg Leave out spices, and flavor with lemon if preferred.
— Mrs. C. W. Banfill
A community-cookbook cake given as a bare ingredient list, with no mixing method, pan size, temperature or time — the assumption being that any cook of the day knew what to do with a one-egg butter cake. Here is what the list implies.
- Sour milk is not spoiled milkThe original means naturally clabbered raw milk, mildly acidic and thickened. Substitute buttermilk cup for cup, or add 2 teaspoons of lemon juice or white vinegar to 2/3 cup whole milk and let it stand ten minutes. Do not use pasteurised milk that has gone off in the refrigerator; it sours by a different route and can be unpleasant.
- The soda is the leaveningThere is no baking powder here. One level teaspoon of soda is on the generous side for 2/3 cup of acidic milk, so measure it level (the "even" in the original) and sift it with the flour rather than dumping it in, or the crumb will taste soapy and turn faintly brown.
- Slade'sD. & L. Slade Co. of Boston sold ground spices and extracts widely in New England in this period; the brand name is advertising, not a specification. Any fresh ground cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg will do, and freshly grated nutmeg is better than what came in the tin.
- Method the list omitsCream the butter with the sugar, beat in the egg, then add the sifted dry ingredients alternately with the sour milk in three additions, beginning and ending with flour. Mix only until combined once the soda meets the acid.
- Pan and ovenThis quantity fits an 8-inch square or a single 8-inch round layer, or about a dozen cupcakes. The original gives no temperature or time; 350F for roughly 30 to 35 minutes for the square, 18 to 20 for cupcakes, until a tester comes out clean, suits the batter.
- Butter and flour1/3 cup butter is about 5 1/3 tablespoons, or 75 g. Household flour of the period was often softer than modern all-purpose; if yours gives a firmer cake, swapping 2 tablespoons of the 2 cups for cornstarch will soften the crumb.
- The lemon variationOmitting the spices leaves a plain sour-milk cake; use a teaspoon of lemon extract or the grated zest of one lemon. Zest creamed into the sugar carries more flavour than extract stirred in at the end.
- YieldEight to nine modest squares. It is a keeping cake — the acid and the soda give it a tender crumb that holds two or three days wrapped, and it wants no more than a dusting of sugar or a thin boiled icing.
Sour milk cakes belong to the era before refrigeration, when a household with a cow or a daily milk delivery always had milk on the turn and no intention of wasting it. The acid in clabbered milk reacts with saleratus or soda to leaven the batter, which is why so many nineteenth- and early twentieth-century recipes call for sour milk specifically and no baking powder at all; the pairing was cheap, reliable and required nothing you did not already have. The recipe is signed by a contributor over her own name, brand loyalties and all, as community-cookbook recipes generally were.