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Fairy Loaf Cake
1½ cups pastry flour 2 level teaspoons Calumet Baking Powder 1 cup granulated sugar 1/2 cup of cornstarch 1/2 cup water 1/2 cup butter Whites of 4 eggs 1/4 teaspoon almond 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla Sift flour once, then measure; add baking powder and sift three times; cream butter and sugar; add well beaten whites, then flavor, then flour and water alternately and beat hard. Bake in 2-inch pan in moderate oven about 40 minutes. 3 cups sifted flour
A white butter cake from a baking-powder company's promotional booklet, built on egg whites and cornstarch for a fine, pale crumb. A few of its instructions run against current practice.
- Fold the whites, don't beat them inThe recipe has you add stiffly beaten whites to the creamed butter and sugar before the flour, then "beat hard" — which deflates most of the air you just whipped in. Fold the whites in gently at the end, after the flour and water have been alternated in, if you want the light crumb the name promises.
- Oven temperatureA moderate oven is usually taken as about 350F, with period usage running up to 375F. The recipe says about 40 minutes for a single 2-inch pan; start testing at 30.
- The pan"2-inch pan" most likely describes the depth rather than the diameter; the book does not state a width. Use a round or square pan two inches deep, greased and floured or lined.
- Flour and cornstarchPastry flour plus cornstarch was a common period way of getting a soft, low-protein crumb. Modern cake flour is close; if you use it, keep the same total of 1 1/2 cups flour and 1/2 cup cornstarch rather than swapping one for the other, since the starch contributes to the tenderness here.
- Sift, then measureThe instruction is deliberate and matters in a cake with this little liquid. Sifted-then-measured flour weighs noticeably less than scooped. If you prefer a scale, 1 1/2 cups sifted pastry flour is roughly 5 1/4 oz / 150 g.
- Calumet baking powderA double-acting powder (acid phosphate with sodium aluminium sulphate); the brand is still sold, though not in its original formulation. Any modern double-acting baking powder substitutes teaspoon for teaspoon.
- Flavoring"1/4 teaspoon almond" means almond extract. A quarter teaspoon is assertive against half a teaspoon of vanilla; that pairing is what makes the cake taste of its period.
- The stray lineThe "3 cups sifted flour" at the end belongs to no step in this recipe — almost certainly a typesetting fragment from an adjacent entry. Ignore it.
- YieldOne layer, perhaps eight modest slices, depending on the pan used. Doubling gives two layers for filling and icing; a plain white boiled icing would be a period-appropriate finish.
Reliable Recipes was one of the small promotional cookbooks issued by the Calumet Baking Powder Company of Chicago, which is why the leavening is named by brand in the ingredient list rather than called plain baking powder — the booklets were advertising as much as instruction, and were reprinted in many editions through the early twentieth century. The cake itself belongs to the large family of American white cakes that flourished once cheap chemical leavening and reliably fine-milled flour made a pale, tender crumb possible at home; egg whites only, no yolks, and cornstarch cut into the flour were all devices for whiteness and delicacy. Names like "fairy," "angel" and "snow" were applied loosely to such cakes and generally signalled lightness and pallor rather than any fixed formula, so a fairy cake in one book may differ considerably from a fairy cake in the next.