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Savoy Cake, Large
The same as the preceding, baked in a large or fancy shaped mold coated with powdered sugar; powdered sugar also sifted on top of the cake forming a glazed surface when baked.
When we come to examine thoroughly the most authoritative, the most noted and the costliest works on cookery extant, and to sift their methods and directions in the full light of a lifetime's working experience in order to discover the simple principles that must underlie every successful method a good deal is revealed that looks like charlatanry and owlish pretense. In this little matter of Italian cakes, to look at the imposing lists of varieties, each with its name, its own set of weights and proportions and mode of procedure, one would think it would take about a century to learn them all, but when we know in advance that every one must rest upon the simple sponge cake mixture however well disguised we are acquainted with the whole of them already. The standard sponge cake mixture, as it may fairly be called, is 1 pound of sugar, 12 eggs and 12 ounces of flour. The nature of the ingredients will not admit of a deviation of over an ounce or two. But if in writing a receipt we designate say three-fifths of these proportions of each article, and for the next variety two-fifths or two-thirds or one-half, the only difference in result will be in the number of cakes produced, but the unfamiliar weights and numbers make it appear on the surface as if each variety had an entirely different composition.
The work that the head of either culinary department of a hotel can actually do with his own hands must be but a small portion of the whole, and however skillful he may be he must be largely dependent upon his assistants for the general excellence of his department. But these assistants cannot know and are not expected to learn a different formula for every different thing they are required to make. The head man will get the more help from those working under him the more he can simplify the processes he gives them to carry out. The receipt already given under the head of Naples biscuits is a good one, but it is only sponge cake mixture at last, and there is a simpler way that may be intrusted to the boys with perfect safety to make all the varieties of Italian cakes that are at all necessary or desirable, and that is only to make common sponge cake batter in a plain and common way.
The instruction is a variation rather than a full recipe, and the proportions that matter are buried in the essay: 1 pound sugar, 12 eggs, 12 ounces flour, with no chemical leavening at all. Everything depends on the eggs.
- The hinge: eggs are the only leaveningThere is no baking powder or soda here. Whip whole eggs with the sugar over gentle warmth until the ribbon holds for several seconds, then fold the sifted flour in by hand in three additions. If the foam is knocked down, a large Savoy mold will bake into a dense band across the bottom.
- The proportions in modern terms1 lb (450 g) sugar, 12 oz (340 g) flour, 12 eggs. Eggs of the period are generally reckoned to have run smaller than today's; 12 large modern eggs (about 600 g out of shell) is close enough, and the text itself says the mixture will not admit a deviation of more than an ounce or two.
- "Powdered sugar"In American pastry writing of this era this means finely ground sugar without added starch, closer to today's superfine or caster sugar than to boxed confectioners' sugar. Either will coat the mold, but superfine gives the crisp, faintly caramelised shell the recipe is after.
- Coating the moldButter the fancy mold thoroughly, then dust heavily with sugar rather than flour, tapping out the excess. The sugar melts against the tin and sets as a thin glaze, which is the whole point of the treatment; it also makes a deeply fluted mold release cleanly.
- OvenThe recipe gives no oven direction at all. By modern practice a large sponge in a deep mold wants a moderate oven, roughly 325-350F, for about 45 to 60 minutes; hotter than that risks setting the sugared crust before the centre has risen. Test with a skewer in the thickest part and look for the cake to pull very slightly from the sides.
- Sugar on topSift sugar over the surface just before it goes in, not partway through. It will crust and craze as the cake domes, which is the intended finish; do not glaze or ice afterwards.
- Turning outLet the cake settle in the mold five to ten minutes, no longer. The sugar glaze stays tacky while hot and will weld to the tin if the cake cools in place.
- YieldThe full 1 lb sugar batter will fill roughly a 9- to 10-inch tube or fancy mold of about 3 quarts and should serve somewhere around 14 to 16, though the original gives no yield. The essay's point is that the fractional versions found in other books, three-fifths or half of these weights, differ only in how much cake you end up with.
Savoy cake, the biscuit de Savoie of French pastry, is a plain whole-egg sponge baked in a tall decorated mold and traditionally traced to the court of Savoy in the fourteenth century, a story repeated in pastry books far more often than it is documented. What it really represents is the oldest branch of European cake making: flour, sugar and eggs beaten to a foam, with no butter and no leavening, a technique that predates chemical raising agents entirely. Jessup Whitehead wrote for the working hotel kitchen rather than the drawing room, and the digression attached to this entry is characteristic of him ake, Naples biscuit and the whole family of "Italian cakes" are one batter under different names and different fractional weights, and that a head pastry man who admits this will get better work out of his assistants. The claim is essentially correct, and it is the reason the recipe itself needs only a single sentence.