Tenth Day
"We are going to have company to tea to-morrow evening," said Mrs. Vernon one morning. "Have you girls a mind to get us up something nice?" "Yes, indeed, Mamma. What shall we make?" "I wish you'd let me be company, too, and not know anything about what we are going to have until I see it on the table. What do you say to that, Jane?" "I should enjoy it. You give us carte blanche, of course?" "Certainly. Do whatever you please, and send for whatever you want. You can't go amiss."
Thereupon Mrs. King and the young people withdrew to hold a private consultation. "Let's have some new things, Aunt Jane," said Grace. "Something different from what Rhoda makes." "I thought we would have some huckleberry cake," answered Aunt Jane; "but I suppose Rhoda knows all about that." "Oh, no, I don't believe she does, for we never have it. It sounds excellent." "Then there's a particularly nice kind of tea-cake that I know of, and that I don't believe your mother has the receipt for. And then you ought to know how to make old-fashioned pound cake." "Oh, we're always having pound-cake! I can't bear it! Please let us put that off till some other day, and give us something new." "So be it, then, but I'll give you the recipe while I think of it. That won't hurt you, at all events."
No. 128-POUND CAKE.
One pound sugar, one of flour, one of eggs, one of butter. Many people use but three-quarters of a pound of butter, and some add a glass of brandy. Beat immensely, and bake with care, not disturbing it after it is once set in the oven, or it will almost certainly be heavy.
No. 129-COMPANY TEA CAKE.
One quart flour and one of milk rubbed smoothly together; stir in six eggs beaten very light, and two-thirds of a cup softened butter. To be eaten hot, with butter. No. CAKE.
Two quarts flour, four tablespoons sugar, one very heaping tablespoonful butter, one teaspoon soda, two of cream tartar, milk enough to make a very thick batter. One quart berries. May be baked in muffin-rings, or in square flat tins. To be eaten hot, with butter.
No. 131-WASHINGTON CAKE.
Three cups of sugar, two of butter, one of milk, four of flour, five eggs, one teaspoonful soda and two of cream tartar. Mix as usual for other cake, then add half a pound currants and a quarter of pound raisins, both thoroughly floured. Some citron, finely sliced (my recipe says a handful,) and a little spice. "What kind of spice, aunty?" "Cinnamon and nutmeg are the most common, but I like a little allspice quite as well, especially where there is fruit. And you must all remember, when you come to bake cake by yourselves, that fruit cake requires a much longer time than the same recipe would need without it." "Why does the fruit have to be floured?" asked Mabel. "It will all sink to the bottom of the cake if it isn't," replied Mrs. King. "And even when it is carefully dredged, it will sometimes have a strong inclination to fall, especially if the batter is at all too thin, or the oven too slow. It requires care and judgment to bake fruit cake well. One great thing is to keep the heat perfectly even. Here is one you can try next winter, but I should advise you to make only half the receipt for the first time." "Oh, I know what that means," said Grace, tossing her head. "You think we're going to spoil it." "I think it is just as well to be careful, and that it would be a pity to waste those good nuts. But here's the recipe."
No. 132-NNUT-CAKE.
Two cups sugar, one of butter, three of flour, one of cold water, four eggs, one teaspoonful soda and two of cream tartar, two cupfuls hickory nut kernels carefully picked out, without any teeth-breaking scraps of shell left among them. "Why don't some of these receipts say baking-powder?" asked Mabel. "Rhoda always keeps it in the kitchen." "Because the most particular cooks think that the fresh combination of soda and cream tartar is nicer. But if you ever happen to be without one of these and have baking-powder, you may use as much of it as are required of the other two put together, or perhaps rather more, and you will be about right. Here is a nice recipe for plain loaf-cake."
No. 133-BREAD CAKE.
One pound risen dough, half a pound sugar, a quarter of a pound butter, half a tumblerful currants, one wellbeaten egg, half a nutmeg, the grated rind and half the juice of a lemon. Mix thoroughly with the hands and set to rise. Leave it in a warm place for several hours, and do not bake until light. It is better if baked in two small loaves than in one large one. Don't forget to butter the tins well. It is not necessary to line them with paper. "How are we to make the dough, Aunt Jane?" "You will have to depend on Rhoda for that. When you are two or three years older, you can learn how to use yeast; but at present we will confine our attention to simple cooking. But I don't think you've had my favorite muffins yet."
No. 134-INDIAN-MEAL MUFFINS.
Two cups corn-meal, one of flour, two and a half of milk, three eggs, one tablespoonful lard, two of white sugar, one teaspoonful soda, two of cream tartar, one of salt. Beat whites and yolks separately, melt the lard, sift soda and cream tartar together with the flour (which must be added last of all,) and then beat with all your might. Bake in small patty-pans.
No. 135-GRAHAM BISCUIT.
A cluster of cake and muffin receipts given as dialogue, with the measurements in the volume-and-weight style of the 1870s. The chemical leavening notes are the most useful part, and the most likely to trip up a modern baker.
- Pound cake by weightA pound of eggs is roughly nine to ten large eggs out of the shell; a pound each of sugar, flour and butter is about 2 1/4 cups sugar, 3 1/2 to 4 cups flour and 4 sticks of butter. This makes a very large cake — two loaf tins or one 10-inch tube pan. The book gives no oven setting; a modern equivalent would be around 325F for well over an hour.
- Soda and cream of tartarThe book's own conversion is sound: one teaspoon soda plus two of cream of tartar is close to three teaspoons of baking powder. Cream of tartar reacts the instant it meets liquid, so batters raised this way must go into the oven at once.
- Quarts of flourFlour and milk are measured by volume here. One quart of flour is 4 cups, so the huckleberry cake (the receipt printed with its number dropped, No. 130) calls for about 8 cups flour — a very large batch. Halve it unless you are feeding a crowd.
- Oven temperaturesNone are given. As a modern starting point, bake the tea cake, huckleberry cake and Indian-meal muffins at 400-425F, the butter cakes at 350F, and the fruited Washington cake and bread cake at 325F. Aunt Jane's warning about even heat reflects baking on a wood- or coal-fired range; a modern oven holds a steadier heat.
- Fruit cake needs longerThe advice is correct and still worth heeding: currants, raisins and citron add moisture and weight, so a fruited batter can need half again as long as the same batter plain. Test with a skewer in the centre, not at the edge.
- Indian mealCornmeal — fine or medium grind, not coarse polenta. The single tablespoon of lard can be replaced with butter or a neutral oil, though lard will give a crisper crust.
- Patty-pans, muffin rings, tumblersPatty-pans are small individual tins; a standard 12-cup muffin pan stands in for them. Muffin rings were metal hoops, used on a griddle or set on a baking sheet in the oven — here the receipt says baked. A tumblerful is usually reckoned at about 8 fluid ounces, so half a tumbler of currants is roughly 1/2 cup.
- Bread cake depends on a dough you must make firstA pound of risen bread dough is roughly the dough made from about 2 cups of flour; ready-made pizza or bread dough works. After mixing in the sugar, butter, egg and fruit the dough will slacken and needs a long second rise — several hours, as stated.
- Company tea cakeEqual quarts of flour and milk with six eggs gives a thin batter closer to a Yorkshire-pudding or popover mixture than a cake. Bake it in a very hot, well-greased pan and serve straight from the oven, as directed; it collapses and toughens on standing.
These pages come from a children's instructional cookbook of the 1870s — Aunt Jane teaching a household of girls, with the receipts numbered and dropped into the conversation rather than tabulated. The chemistry argument in the middle places the book in a long-running debate: commercial baking powder was widely sold by then, and Mabel's question about why the recipes call for soda and cream of tartar instead is exactly the question a child in a nineteenth-century kitchen might have asked. Careful cooks distrusted packaged powders, partly on grounds of freshness and partly because adulteration was a real and much-discussed problem. Washington cake is one of a family of patriotic cake names — alongside Election, Independence and Martha Washington cakes — that flourished in nineteenth-century American books; the name signals a rich fruited loaf for company rather than any documented connection to the man. Huckleberries explain Grace's delight at a cake she had never met at her own table.