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Sponge Cake (Egg yolks cup sugar tbsp cold)
4 egg yolks 1 cup sugar 3 tbsp. cold water 1½ tbsp. corn starch flour 1¼ tsp. Royal bak. powder 1/4 tsp. salt whites 4 eggs 1 tsp. extract Beat yolks of eggs and water until thick, add sugar gradually and beat 2 minutes. Put cornstarch in a cup and fill cup with flour, mix and sift cornstarch and flour with baking powder and salt, add to first mixture. When thoroughly mixed add whites of eggs beaten stiff and flavoring. Bake 30 minutes in a moderate oven.
A plain yolk-and-white sponge from the era when baking powder had begun creeping into cakes that once relied on eggs alone. The instructions are compressed almost to shorthand, so a few readings need untangling before you start.
- "Corn starch flour" is one cup totalThe ingredient line and the method together mean this: put 1½ tablespoons of cornstarch into a dry measuring cup, then fill the rest of the cup with flour. You end up with one level cup of mixed dry starch and flour, not a cup of each.
- Royal baking powderRoyal was a cream-of-tartar powder, single-acting. Modern double-acting baking powder can be used in the same quantity, 1¼ teaspoons; because part of its gas is held back until the oven rather than all released at mixing, the batter tolerates a short wait on the counter better than the original would have.
- Moderate ovenGenerally taken as about 350-375°F. Thirty minutes at that heat suits a single 8- or 9-inch layer or a small tube pan; a deeper pan will want longer, and a skewer test is the safer guide.
- "Beat yolks and water until thick"This is the hinge. The yolks and cold water are whipped to a pale, ribbon-thick foam before any sugar goes in; with no butter in the batter, that aeration does much of the work. Expect several minutes of beating.
- Folding, not mixingThe dry ingredients are beaten in, but the stiff whites are the last thing added and are best folded through with a spatula rather than stirred.
- ExtractUnspecified. One teaspoon of lemon or vanilla suits this cake.
- Pan and coolingBake in an ungreased tube pan and invert it to cool, or line the bottom of a round pan with paper and cool on a rack. A sponge with this little fat collapses if it cools while sitting on its own crumb.
- YieldRoughly one modest layer, about eight thin servings; good plain or with fruit and cream.
Sponge cake of this type sits at a turning point. The true sponge, raised only by beaten egg, had been in English and American cookery for well over a century. By the time community cookbooks like this one were compiled, chemical leavening had arrived as insurance, and the small addition of cornstarch to soften the flour was a common trick before cake flour was widely sold. The naming of a commercial brand in the ingredient list is characteristic of the period: Royal and its competitors distributed recipe pamphlets, and contributors copied the brand along with the measurement.