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Ordinary White Cake
1 pound of sugar. 8 ounces of butter, melted. 10 whites of eggs. 1 cupful of milk. 2 teaspoonfuls of baking powder. 1 1/2 pounds of flour. Beat the sugar, melted butter and whites all together a minute or two, add the milk, powder, flour and flavor.
Now, if we had to make cakes in some place where people took notice and made remarks and said we did not know much about making good things in hotels nohow, and if they couldn't do better they would sell out, we should want to make the snow cake as beautiful and white as cotton batting, bake it thin in jelly cake pans, spread some of the richest confections between the cakes, and ice the top, having the cake and the icing so near alike in whiteness as to be hardly distinguishable apart.
A hotel baker's formula given by weight, with no oven temperature and no pan count. Two things need attention before you start: the flour figure and the flavoring.
- Weigh, don't scoop1 lb sugar is about 2 1/4 cups, 8 oz butter is two sticks, and 1 1/2 lb flour is roughly 5 1/2 cups. Volume measures drift badly at this scale, so use a scale if you have one.
- The flour is high1 1/2 lb flour against 1 lb sugar, 8 oz butter, 10 whites and a single cup of milk gives a very stiff batter by modern standards. Period flour need not have behaved like modern all-purpose; expect to add milk until the batter drops thickly from the spoon rather than trusting the cup exactly.
- LeaveningTwo teaspoons of baking powder for 5 1/2 cups of flour is light. Period baking powders were single-acting and variable in strength, but for reliable lift with this much flour you would normally see three to four teaspoons.
- Melted butter, not creamedThe butter goes in melted and the whites unbeaten, which makes this a quick mixing method rather than a foam cake. The minute or two specified applies to the sugar, butter and whites; once the flour is in, mix only until combined, since longer work toughens it.
- "Flavor"Whitehead assumes the baker's own extract bottle. Vanilla, almond or lemon, about two teaspoons, all of which suit a white cake.
- OvenNo temperature is given. Thin layers in jelly cake pans want 350-375F for 15-20 minutes; a single deep cake of this size wants a moderate oven and considerably longer, so test it rather than trusting a time.
- YieldThis is a bakery-sized batch, roughly 4 lb of batter. Expect six to eight thin 9-inch layers, or two large loaf cakes. Halve it for a domestic kitchen.
- Keeping it whiteButter, egg white and the flour of the day all carry color. Bake only until the layers spring back, before any real browning, and use a plain white icing if you want the cake and icing indistinguishable as described.
The American Pastry Cook belongs to Jessup Whitehead, a Chicago writer who spent the 1880s and 1890s producing manuals for hotel and restaurant kitchens rather than for households, which explains both the pound-scale quantities and the aside about guests who take notice and make remarks. The digression is the point of the page: an ordinary white cake was a hotel workhorse, but split thin, filled and iced snow-white it became "snow cake" and could be sent to the dining room as something better.