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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.