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Thirteenth Day: Mabel
Mabel then began to peel the peaches, while Mrs. King showed Amy how to make a new kind of cake for jelly. No. 166-MARTHA'S CAKE.
Three eggs, one cup of sugar, one of flour, a piece of butter the size of an egg, one teaspoonful cream tartar, half a teaspoonful soda, dissolved in a tablespoonful milk. "This is a very simple cake," said her mother, "and we may think when we come to look at it to-morrow that it is too plain for company; if so, we can make some of Jenny's nice sponge cake, from our No. 6 receipt. Here is another that you may write down."
No. 167-PUFF CAKE.
Two cups sugar, two and a half of flour, half a cup of butter, one of milk, three eggs, a teaspoonful cream tartar and half a teaspoonful soda.
While Amy put the cake together, Mrs. King and Mabel pared, stoned and cut up the peaches. Then Mabel weighed them, and found that there were two pounds.
These her aunt told her to put over the fire in a saucepan with one pound of white sugar and a cupful of water. "We don't stew peaches for ordinary pies," said she, "but as I want this one to look handsome as well as taste nice, I am going to take extra pains with it."
When about half cooked the peaches were taken off the fire and set away for awhile, and by the time Grace's paste was ready to roll out, they were cool enough to use. When a couple of pie-plates had been lined with paste, the stewed peaches were poured into them until even with the top; across this strips of paste were laid in diamond-shaped lattice-work, each strip being twisted like a strand of worsted cord before it was placed over the compote; then a margin of paste just the size of that of the pie-dish was laid on, the under surface being first wet with cold water. "Why did you stew these first, Aunt Jane?" asked Grace. "For several reasons. Unless the peaches had been piled up high in the middle, which would have made the surface uneven, they would have shrunken so much as to have made the top fall in; then they would have taken so much longer to cook than the paste, that it would have become quite brown by the time they were done. (By the way, I'll tell you how to make a beautiful apple-pie when we get through with this.) Now you will see that when the pie is cold there will be a smooth jellied surface, and you musn't forget to have some powdered sugar ready to sift over it the instant it comes out of the oven." "Now tell me about the apple-pie, please."
No. 167-APPLE PIE.
Pare, core and slice very fine, ripe, tart apples; place a layer in the bottom of a pie-dish, then a layer of sugar, over which sprinkle the smallest pinch of ground cloves; repeat this process until the dish is full, pour in a tablespoonful of water, cover with puff-paste not rolled out very thin, and bake. This is far more healthful than pies baked with an under-crust, though the same recipe will answer for that kind also.
Three receipts sit inside one page of narrative: two plain cakes, a stewed-peach lattice pie, and a crustless-bottom apple pie. None gives an oven temperature or a time, which is normal for the period and is the main gap to fill.
- Butter the size of an eggThat is about 2 ounces, or 4 tablespoons. Martha's Cake is otherwise a straight three-egg one-cup cake and will fit a single 8-inch round or a small loaf.
- Cream of tartar and sodaThe pairing is a homemade single-acting leavener: one teaspoon cream of tartar with half a teaspoon soda is roughly equivalent to two teaspoons of modern baking powder. Because the acid activates the moment the milk goes in, get the batter into the pan and the pan into the oven without delay.
- Oven for the cakesBake both at 350F. Martha's Cake in an 8-inch round runs about 25-30 minutes; Puff Cake, which is more than double the batter, wants two 8-inch pans and 30-35 minutes, or a tube pan and closer to 45.
- Oven for the piesStart the peach pie at 425F for 15 minutes to set the lattice, then drop to 375F for another 25-30. The filling is already half-cooked, so you are baking pastry, not fruit.
- The hinge: half-cook the peachesAunt Jane's reasoning is sound and worth following literally. Two pounds of prepared peaches, a pound of sugar and a cup of water, simmered only until the fruit softens and the syrup begins to thicken, then cooled. Cook them through at this stage and they collapse into jam; skip the step and the filling shrinks away from the lid.
- Two pounds of peachesThat is the weight after paring and stoning, roughly 6-8 medium peaches, and it fills the two pie-plates the text calls for. A pound of sugar to two of fruit is heavily sweetened by modern standards; with ripe modern freestones, half that is enough unless you want the firm jellied surface the text promises.
- The latticeTwisting each strip before laying it is a decorative technique, not a structural one, and it works best with a well-chilled paste. The strip of pastry laid around the rim, wetted underneath, is what seals the lattice to the plate.
- The apple pieThis is a deep-dish pie with a top crust only. Tart firm apples sliced thin, layered with sugar and the barest pinch of cloves, one tablespoon of water, a puff paste lid left on the thick side. Bake at 400F for about 45 minutes, until the crust is set and the juices bubble at the vent.
- A numbering slipThe book gives No. 167 twice, to both Puff Cake and Apple Pie. The error is in the original and is left as printed.
Six Little Cooks belongs to a small genre of the 1870s: the cookbook written as a story, in which an aunt or mother teaches a circle of girls to cook across a series of numbered lessons, and the receipts are numbered so that readers can copy them into a blank book of their own, exactly as Amy is told to do here. The chemistry on the page marks the moment precisely. Packaged baking powder had been on sale for some years, but many household cooks are said to have gone on buying cream of tartar and soda separately and combining them by the spoonful, in part out of a distrust of adulterated proprietary powders. The pie lesson is equally of its time: Aunt Jane's remark that an apple pie without an under-crust is "far more healthful" reflects a long-running nineteenth-century anxiety about soggy bottom pastry as an indigestible article, an argument that appears in domestic manuals on both sides of the Atlantic.