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Delicate Cake
14 ounces of granulated sugar. 12 ounces of butter. 12 ounces of white of eggs. 8 ounces of flour. 8 ounces of corn starch. Juice of half a lemon. 2 teaspoonfulls of flavoring extracts. 1/2 cup of milk. 1 bastingspoonful of brandy.
Don't beat the whites to a froth, but cream the butter and sugar together, add the whites by portions, then the starch and flour, and after them the lemon juice, milk, flavorings and brandy. Beat all together well.
A white cake built entirely on weights, with no leavening and no baking instructions at all — the book assumes a working pastry cook who knows what to do with a batter once it is mixed.
- No chemical leavening, by designThere is no baking powder or soda here, so every bit of rise comes from air beaten into the butter and sugar. Cream them until visibly pale and fluffy, several minutes with a mixer, or the cake will bake up dense and close-grained.
- The instruction that matters"Don't beat the whites to a froth" is the hinge. The whites go in liquid, in portions, as you would add whole eggs to a creamed batter; whipping them turns this into a different cake entirely and invites the batter to break.
- Egg whites by weight12 ounces of whites is roughly 11 to 12 large whites, a little under 1 1/2 cups. Weighing is more reliable than counting.
- BastingspoonfulBasting spoons were not a standardized measure. Somewhere between 1 and 2 tablespoons of brandy is within the spirit of the recipe.
- Corn starchSplitting the flour half-and-half with corn starch lowers the protein and gives the tender, short crumb that "delicate" refers to. It works on the same principle as modern cake flour, though this half-and-half mix is considerably lower in protein than cake flour, so a straight 16 ounces of cake flour will give a sturdier crumb.
- Flavoring extractsTwo teaspoons total, and the choice was the cook's: vanilla, almond and rose all appear in white cakes of the period.
- Oven and timeNone is given. Bake at 325 to 350F; a batter this rich and low in leavening does better at the lower end. Test with a skewer rather than by time.
- Yield and pansThe batter comes to something over 3 1/2 pounds — more than two 9-inch layers will take, or a large tube pan. Grease and line the pans, since there is nothing in the formula to help the cake release.
"Delicate cake" was a standing category in nineteenth-century American baking rather than a single recipe: it meant a cake made with whites only, so that the crumb came out white and fine instead of yellow and close. The conventional pairing of the period was "silver cake" with "gold cake," which used the leftover yolks, and the two were often baked on the same day for that reason — a household or bakeshop breaking a dozen eggs could not afford to waste half of them. The heavy use of corn starch may mark this as a later version of the type; American corn starch is generally said to have become a cheap grocery staple after the mid-century, and bakers found it lightened wheat flour long before commercial cake flour was sold. That this book gives weights in ounces, offers no oven temperature, and measures brandy by the basting spoon suggests an audience that needed the formula and nothing else — though weights and missing oven directions were common in household cookbooks of the period as well.