Sponge Cake
14 ounces of sugar. 12 eggs. 12 ounces of flour.
Put the eggs and sugar together in a kettle, tin pail, or deep pan, set in a vessel of ice water and beat the mixture rapidly for half an hour by the clock. Then lightly stir in the flour. If the beating be faithfully performed this sponge cake batter can be used to make lady-fingers, savoy cakes, plain unglazed sponge cakes, jelly rolls and the half dozen varieties of Italian small cakes already described.
One day one of my boys showed me such an assortment as the above all made out of a kettle of sponge cake batter 4 times the quantity of the receipt, and when they have been approved, with a sly look he said: "But I was late and only beat the eggs and sugar 20 minutes." "Your ingredients were in good condition and the atmosphere is dry and cold. There are exceptions to every rule, but you must work by the rule and not the exception. Besides there is a good deal in knowing how to beat effectively."
A foam cake with nothing in it but eggs, sugar and flour — no butter, no chemical leavening, no liquid. Everything depends on how much air the eggs hold, which is why the original spends more words on beating than on baking.
- The hinge: beat to the ribbonThe half hour is a hand-whisk figure, and the anecdote in the recipe is really an argument about judging the foam rather than the clock. In a stand mixer with the whisk on high, expect roughly 10 to 15 minutes, and longer if you keep the bowl cold as the original directs: the mass should triple, turn pale ivory, and fall from the whisk in a ribbon that sits on the surface for several seconds before sinking.
- Weights, not cups14 oz sugar is about 2 cups; 12 oz flour is about 2 3/4 cups spooned and levelled. Twelve large eggs run roughly 21 oz out of the shell. Weigh if you can — the ratio is the whole recipe.
- The ice water bathBeating cold slows the foam but builds a tighter, more stable one that tolerates handling into fingers and rolls. Most modern genoise method does the opposite, warming eggs and sugar over hot water to about 110F for speed. Either works; cold takes longer and is more forgiving of over-beating.
- Folding in the flourSift the flour and fold it in in three additions with a large spatula, cutting down and lifting through. "Lightly stir" is the operative phrase — every extra stroke costs you volume, and this batter has no baking powder to compensate.
- Flour choiceNineteenth-century pastry flour was softer than today's all-purpose. Cake flour, or all-purpose with two tablespoons per cup replaced by cornstarch, gives a closer crumb to what the author expected.
- Oven temperaturesThe receipt gives no oven directions, so these are modern figures. Thin work — lady fingers, savoy biscuits, jelly-roll sheets — wants a hot oven, about 375 to 400F, for 6 to 10 minutes so the surface sets before the foam slumps. A plain sponge baked in a deep tin wants about 350F, for 30 to 40 minutes.
- PansBake in ungreased tube or straight-sided tins so the batter can climb, and invert to cool. Sheets for jelly rolls go on parchment; turn the hot sheet out onto a sugared towel and roll it while warm or it will crack.
- YieldThe full quantity makes roughly 3 lb of batter — two 9-inch layers plus a half-sheet, or six or seven dozen lady fingers. Halve it comfortably.
This is the plain sponge of the professional bakeshop, the batter a shop kept going all day because it could be piped, sheeted, rolled or panned as orders came in — which is exactly the point the author is making when he lists lady fingers, savoy cakes, jelly rolls and Italian small cakes coming out of one kettle. Cakes raised on beaten egg alone are much older than chemical leavening, generally traced in English cookery to the seventeenth-century "biscuit bread" and in France to the biscuit de Savoie; the name "sponge" is often said to describe the open, absorbent crumb that soaks up syrup or liqueur. The scolding of the apprentice suggests a book addressed to the boys working under the author on the bench rather than to housekeepers, and one that cared far more about consistency of method than about any single successful batch.