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Magnolia Meringue
For the first part or bottom layer make this most useful cake mixture, called butter sponge cake. 1 pound of granulated sugar. 10 eggs. 1/2 pound of butter melted. 1/2 pint of milk, slightly warmed. 1 1/2 pounds of flour. 2 teaspoonfuls of baking powder. Vanilla or lemon flavor.
Beat the sugar and eggs together about five minutes. Add the melted butter, the milk, the extract of vanilla, and beat all one minute more. Then beat in the baking powder, and into the light foamy batter thus made immediately stir the flour.
This can be used for jelly cakes, cream cakes, and many other purposes. Butter and flour the bottoms of two bright pudding-pans--four quart milk pans are good--and spread the cake batter over thinly, like jelly cakes. Bake very light colored. Let the batter be well up to the edges so as to have the sheets level, not bulged up in the middle. Then make the lemon cream. 3 pints of water--scant. 3/4 pound of sugar. 4 lemons. 3 ounces of corn starch. 1 ounce of butter. 10 yolks of eggs.
Boil the water with the butter in it. Mix the starch, sugar and grated lemon rinds all together dry, then stir rapidly into the boiling water. Take the mixture from the fire; add to it the juice of three of the lemons, (if large), and then the beaten yolks.
Pour this mixture on top of the sheets of cake in the pans, without loosening them, and bake in a slow oven about 15 minutes on the shelf of the oven, or with a pan under to prevent the bottoms baking too much. The preceding is almost lemon pie mixture, but is firm enough to cut square sided like cake.
When the lemon cream is fairly set spread a thick layer of meringue on it while still hot and finish baking with the oven door open; time about ten minutes. Serve cut in tall but narrow diamonds or squares in plates or saucers with whipped cream around. Ten to fourteen whites and about as many ounces of sugar are required for the meringue.
A bakery-scale recipe in three stages: a thin butter sponge sheet, a lemon cornstarch cream baked onto it, and a meringue finished on top. The quantities are for a trade shop, so halving or quartering is sensible for a home oven.
- The hingeThe flour goes into the foamy batter last and is stirred, not beaten. Once the baking powder is in, work quickly and stop the moment the flour disappears; extended mixing at that stage gives a tough, close-grained sheet rather than the light one the layers depend on.
- Scale and yieldAs written this is close to 5 lb of cake batter and 3 pints of lemon cream, spread over two large sheets; the portion count is not given, but a shop cutting narrow diamonds would get several dozen. A quarter batch (2 1/2 eggs is awkward, so use 3 eggs and scale the rest by weight) fits one 9x13 pan.
- Pans"Bright pudding-pans" and "four quart milk pans" are shallow, straight-sided metal pans, not deep casseroles. Any light-colored rimmed sheet pan or 9x13 works; the rim matters because the lemon cream is poured onto the baked sheet while it sits in the pan.
- Oven temperaturesThe book gives no figures. The sponge sheets are to be baked only until set and 'very light colored'; a moderate oven, around 350F, suits a thin sheet. 'Slow oven' in period usage is usually taken as about 300F, and the meringue finishes at the same low heat with the door propped, about ten minutes, drying the surface without browning it hard.
- Measurements by weight3 ounces of cornstarch is a scant 3/4 cup, and 3/4 pound of sugar is about 1 3/4 cups. Weigh them. The 1 1/2 lb of flour to 1 lb sugar ratio only behaves as intended if flour is weighed rather than scooped.
- The lemon creamGrated rind mixed dry with the starch and sugar keeps the starch from lumping when it hits boiling water. Take the pan off the heat before the juice and yolks go in: acid thins cooked starch, and yolks scramble. The mixture will look loose in the pan; the oven finishes the set.
- Meringue ratio"Ten to fourteen whites and about as many ounces of sugar" is one ounce of sugar per white, roughly 2 tablespoons each, which is a soft meringue rather than a hard one. Beat to firm, glossy peaks and spread while the lemon layer is still hot, which helps the underside cook and reduces weeping.
- Cutting and servingChilling before cutting, with a hot, wiped blade, makes the 'tall but narrow diamonds or squares' the recipe calls for easier to get clean. The recipe finishes them in plates or saucers with whipped cream spooned around; it does not say whether the cream is sweetened.
"The American Pastry Cook" belongs to the late nineteenth-century wave of trade manuals written by working bakers for other working bakers, which is why the quantities run to pounds and pints and why one batter is offered as a workhorse "used for jelly cakes, cream cakes, and many other purposes." The butter sponge here is a distinctly American hybrid: the whole-egg foam of a genoise, but propped up with baking powder and enriched with melted butter and milk, a formula that tolerates rough handling on a busy bench. The lemon layer is, as the author puts it, "almost lemon pie mixture, but is firm enough to cut square sided." As for the name Magnolia, there is no evidence of a particular origin behind it beyond the fashion for genteel-sounding counter names.