Snow Cake
14 ounces of granulated sugar. 12 ounces of white dairy butter. 1 pound of white of eggs--about 18 whites. 8 ounces of fine flour. 10 ounces of corn starch. Juice of one lemon. 1/2 cupful of milk. Flavoring extracts. Little brandy.
Don't beat the whites to a froth. Cream the butter and sugar together, add the whites a little at a time, then the starch and flour, after that the lemon juice, flavorings and milk. Beat well.
A professional baker's formula: everything by weight, no pan size, no oven temperature, no baking time. The proportions are sound but you supply the missing half of the method.
- The hinge: unwhipped whites"Don't beat the whites to a froth" is the whole technique. The whites go in liquid, a few tablespoons at a time, into creamed butter and sugar, exactly as you would add yolks or whole eggs to any butter cake. Whipping them first would give you an angel-food batter that the 12 ounces of butter would immediately collapse.
- Weights and their cup equivalents14 oz granulated sugar is about 2 cups; 12 oz butter is 3 sticks; 8 oz flour is a scant 2 cups; 10 oz cornstarch is roughly 2 1/4 cups. A pound of egg whites is about 2 cups, and modern large eggs give roughly 1 oz of white each, so 16 whites rather than 18.
- White dairy butterFresh unsalted butter, uncolored. The wording probably distinguishes it from the salted or annatto-tinted butter a nineteenth-century shop might otherwise use, though the recipe does not say so. Any good unsalted butter works, and it must be at cool room temperature to cream properly.
- No leavening is listedThe formula relies entirely on air beaten into the butter and on the whites, which is why the instruction ends "Beat well." Cream the butter and sugar until genuinely pale and fluffy, five minutes or more in a stand mixer. If your cakes come out dense, 2 teaspoons of baking powder sifted with the flour and cornstarch is the usual modern insurance.
- Why so much cornstarchCornstarch is more than half the dry weight here. It dilutes the flour's gluten and gives the very short, tender, snow-white crumb the name promises. Sift the flour and cornstarch together at least twice or the starch will stay in lumps.
- Flavorings, quantifiedFlavorings -- 'Flavoring extracts' is left open; vanilla, often with a little almond behind it, is the usual choice for a white cake. Allow 2 teaspoons vanilla and 1/2 teaspoon almond extract if that suits you. 'Little brandy' can reasonably be read as about a tablespoon, added with the milk.
- Pans and ovenThe batter comes to about 4 lb: three 9-inch round layers, or two 9x5 loaves plus a small pan. No oven temperature is given; 325-350F works, baked until a tester comes out clean -- about 30-35 minutes for layers, 55-65 for loaves. Higher heat browns the crust and defeats the point of a snow cake.
- ServingA plain white boiled icing, or a lemon glaze, suits it better than anything that would tint the surface. Three layers will serve 12 to 16.
Snow cake belongs to the family of white cakes -- silver cake, bride's cake, lady cake -- that Victorian and Edwardian bakers built from egg whites alone, keeping the yolks for gold cake, custards or ice cream so that nothing was wasted. Its heavy dose of cornstarch reflects the spread of refined corn starch as a cheap household staple in nineteenth-century America, promoted for cakes because it gave a whiter, more delicate crumb than wheat flour alone. The style of the formula -- everything in ounces, no pan and no oven -- suggests it was set down for someone who already knew his oven and needed only the proportions.