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Butter Sponge Cake
1 pound of granulated sugar. 10 eggs. 8 or 10 ounces of butter. 1 cupful of milk--1/2 pint. 2 teaspoonfuls of baking powder. 1 1/2 pounds of flour. Beat the sugar and eggs together a few minutes as if for sponge cake, melt the butter and beat it in, add the milk, then the powder and then the flour and stir up well. Flavor if desired.
If I had to lose the knowledge of all kinds of cakes but one I should choose the above. It is comparatively cheap; when fresh it is as good as any, and answers more purposes than any other mixture made. In the exigencies that often overtake us when the hotel business is good, I have frequently begun when the doors were just opened for dinner, and had large sheets of this light cake 1 or 2 inches thick and nicely glazed with sugar baked on top ready to send in when the plates were changed either as pudding or cake--about 25 minutes from the time of beginning-which could not be done with any richer mixture.
A hotel-scale sheet cake from a professional's book: the quantities assume a bakery mixer and full-size sheet pans, and everything is weighed rather than measured. Scaling it down by half or a quarter is the first thing most home cooks will want to do.
- The cup is a half pintThe author spells it out: 1 cupful equals 8 fluid ounces. Butter at 8 to 10 ounces is a range he expects you to choose within, richer or leaner as you like; 8 oz is two American sticks.
- Weigh the flourA pound and a half is about 5 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour, but the difference between a scooped cup and a spooned one will wreck the ratio at this scale. Use a scale. Bread flour will make it tough; pastry or all-purpose is the likelier reading of the unqualified "flour" here, though the book does not specify.
- That flour ratio is highOne and a half pounds of flour to one pound of sugar makes a firm, close-grained cake rather than a tender one, which is exactly why it holds up cut into squares and sent out under a sauce. Some readers reduce the flour to a pound and a quarter for a softer crumb; that is a departure from the original, not a correction of it.
- LeaveningTwo teaspoons of baking powder for a pound and a half of flour is light by modern standards, because the ten eggs beaten with the sugar are doing most of the lifting. Do not add more without also beating the eggs and sugar properly.
- Beat the eggs and sugar hard"A few minutes as if for sponge cake" means until the mixture is pale, thick and falls from the whisk in a ribbon that holds a moment on the surface. With a stand mixer that is 6 to 8 minutes on high. This is the hinge of the recipe.
- Melted butter deflatesLet the butter cool to warm, not hot, and fold it in with a light hand. Poured hot into the foam it will knock the air straight out and give you a dense, greasy layer at the bottom of the pan.
- OvenThe book gives no temperature at all; for a sheet 1 to 2 inches thick, 350-375F is a reasonable modern setting. His 25 minutes is the whole elapsed time from beginning the batter to sending it in, not a baking time. Round layers will want 30 to 35 minutes.
- The sugar glaze"Nicely glazed with sugar baked on top" most likely means granulated or coarse sugar scattered over the raw batter before it goes in, which sets into a thin crackled crust. On flavoring the recipe says only "flavor if desired" and names nothing.
The American Pastry Cook is generally attributed to Jessup Whitehead, a Chicago hotel cook and trade writer of the late nineteenth century whose books were addressed to professionals working in hotel and restaurant kitchens rather than to housekeepers. That audience explains everything about this entry: the pound weights, the sheet pans, the frank note that he has started the batter as the dining room doors opened and had it on the plate by the time the covers were changed. A butter sponge of this kind sits between the true sponge, which is eggs, sugar and flour with no fat, and the pound cake, which is creamed butter; adding melted butter and milk to a beaten-egg foam gives a cake that keeps a day, absorbs sauce without collapsing, and can be served as pudding or as cake depending on what the kitchen needs. The same principle survives in the hot-milk sponge cakes of American home baking. Whitehead's aside that he would keep this recipe above all others if he had to lose the rest is a working cook's judgment about utility, not about luxury.