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The American Pastry Cook
1. Angel Food, or White Sponge Cake. 11 whites of eggs. 10 ounces of fine granulated sugar--all that can be shaken and heaped on a cup. 5 ounces of flour--a cup moderately heaped. 2 rounded teaspoonfuls of cream of tartar. 2 teaspoonfuls of vanilla or lemon extract. Get two pans together, put the cream of tartar into the flour and mix them by sifting out of one pan into the other six or seven times. Whip the whites firm enough to bear up an egg, put in the sugar, beat a few seconds, add the flavoring, then stir in the flour lightly without beating. When the flour is mixed in fairly out of sight it is finished. As soon as mixed put the cake in the oven. It needs careful baking like a meringue in a slack oven and should stay in from 20 to 30 minutes. A deep smooth mold with an unusually large tube is the best, but any other will do. The mold should not be greased, but when the cake is done turn it upside down, the tube or something else holding it up to let the air in, and leave it to get cold before trying to take it out. Then cover it with the plain sugar glaze of the next receipt.
The rule for angel food in large quantities is a pound of sugar, a pound of whites, half a pound of flour and an ounce of cream tartar. Angel food, as this peculiarly white and light sponge cake is fancifully named has quite a history to be recorded. It originated in St Louis a few years ago and is seen oftener in the hotel bills of fare of that city than anywhere else. S. Sides, who kept a large cafe or restaurant there invented it and did not fail to make the most of his discovery, and it soon came into such great demand that not only was no fine party supper complete without it but it was shipped to distant cities, orders coming even from London. For some time the method of making it was kept a profound secret but at length the inventor yielded so far as to sell the receipt for twenty-five dollars, having it understood that it could not be made without a certain powder that could be obtained from him alone. It did not take long to discover that the powder was nothing but cream of tartar and the receipt once communicated gradually became common property. Many of the caterers for parties make a specially of it, for it is still sufficiently difficult to make always alike to prevent its becoming utterly common, and a considerable number of the cakes are sent out packed in boxes to surrounding towns, and occasionally to the east and south. The difficulty such as it is, that makes the caterers say this cake has been more trouble to them than anything else, and leads to the use of special molds to bake it in is the tendency to fall in at the centre after baking. The mold not being greased holds the cake up to its shape until cold. The lamb's-wool texture of it may be made finer by stirring after the flour is added. The cake will be better when a day o'd than when first baked, but to keep the outside from drying and to make it better eating, as it has no richness in its ingredients, it is always covered with a flavored sugar glaze or icing. It may have no direct connection with it, but Sides, who originated angel food, afterwards lost his reason and was taken to an insane asylum, his wife continuing the business he established.
Pearl Glaze for Angel Food, etc. 1 cupful of icing sugar. 2 whites of eggs 2 teaspoonfuls of flavoring extract. Mix them together in a bowl. As soon as the sugar is fairly wetted it is ready but may be whitened by beating one minute. It dries pearl white; takes but a few minutes to prepare. Spread it over the bottom and sides of angel food. It also gives a rich transparent sort of eatable appearance to the top of a fine jelly cake, and shows up ornaments of finished white icing finely. It does nearly as well with the sugar only slightly wetted with water instead of white of egg, when it is to be spread on pastry, as the sugar dries white. It can also be colored pink, or with chocolate, or made yellow by mixing with yolk of egg.
A weight-based cake from the era before commercial baking powder, and it still works as written provided the oven is kept low and the pan left ungreased. The measurements in ounces are the reliable ones; the cup equivalents the author offers are approximations of his own flour and sugar.
- Slack ovenA "slack" or "cool" oven in this period is usually reckoned somewhere around 250-300F; treat any modern figure as an approximation. Keeping the heat low stops the outside setting and browning before the interior sets.
- Baking timeTwenty to thirty minutes is the author's figure. A modern 9- or 10-inch tube pan with this quantity of batter will want longer, roughly 35-45 minutes at a low oven; the cake is done when the top springs back and a skewer comes out clean.
- Weigh, don't scoop10 oz sugar (roughly 1 1/3 to 1 1/2 cups granulated, and the author says a heaped cup) and 5 oz flour (about 1 1/4 cups, sifted) are the figures to trust. Eleven whites run to roughly 11-12 oz, or 1 1/3 to 1 1/2 cups, but egg size varied then as now, so weigh the whites if you can.
- Cream of tartar is the leavening systemCream of tartar is the stabiliser, not a leavener -- There is no soda and no baking powder here, and the lift comes from air in the whites. The acid lowers the pH of the whites, which stabilizes the foam and keeps the crumb white; 2 rounded teaspoons for this quantity is correct, not a misprint.
- Flour, sifted to nothingSifting six or seven times is not fussiness: the author's stated purpose is to distribute the cream of tartar evenly through the flour, and repeated sifting aerates it as well. Modern flour still benefits from several passes.
- "Firm enough to bear up an egg"This means a stiff, self-supporting foam, but stop before it turns dry and grainy. Once beaten past that point the whites cannot stretch and the cake will not rise.
- FoldingAdd the flour in three or four additions and fold, not beat. The author's "fairly out of sight" is the endpoint; a few streaks are better than a deflated batter.
- Ungreased pan, inverted coolingThe hinge of the whole recipe. The batter must grip the sides to hold its height, and the cake must hang upside down until completely cold or it sinks. Do not use a nonstick or greased pan, and do not turn it out warm.
- Raw egg in the pearl glazeThe glaze is uncooked white of egg and sugar, which carries a salmonella risk with shell eggs. Use pasteurized whites, or take the author's own alternative and wet the icing sugar with water instead.
- YieldOne 9-10 inch tube cake, 10 to 12 slices. The bulk formula given at the end -- 1 lb sugar, 1 lb whites, 1/2 lb flour, 1 oz cream of tartar -- is roughly one and a half times the quantities of the single receipt (though it carries proportionally more cream of tartar).
Angel food belongs to the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when finely milled white flour, cheap purified cream of tartar sold as a baking acid, and the rotary egg beater were all to hand in American kitchens. The St. Louis origin story told here -- the restaurateur S. Sides, the twenty-five dollar receipt, the "certain powder" that turned out to be cream of tartar -- is the author's own account and should be read as trade lore rather than documented history; other white sponge cakes of the period go under names such as silver cake and snow cake. What the passage does document is the author's picture of the trade in his own day: a cake difficult enough to make consistently that caterers guarded it as a specialty, boxed and shipped to surrounding towns. Tube molds suit cakes of this type, the central chimney carrying heat into the middle of a batter baked at so low a temperature, though the author's own reason for the special molds is the cake's tendency to fall in at the centre.