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Water Sponge Cake
14 ounces of granulated sugar--2 cups 8 eggs. 1/2 pint of water--a large cup. 18 ounces flour--4 rounded cups. 1 heaping teaspoonful baking powder. Separate the eggs, the whites into a good-sized bowl, the yolks into the mixing pan.
Put the sugar and water with the yolks and beat up until they are light and thick.
Mix the powder in the flour.
Whip the whites to a very firm froth, and when they are ready stir the flour into the yolk mixture and mix in the whipped whites last. Bake either in small sponge cake molds--the little tin oblong-shaped pans joined a dozen together--or else spread in a large pan, and cut the cake in squares when it is cold.
A butterless sponge in bakeshop proportions — weights first, cup equivalents second. Trust the weights; the cup figures are approximations from a trade manual, and 18 oz of flour is closer to 4 cups only if you scoop and heap it as a 1890s baker would.
- The hinge: fold, do not stirThe whites are the only real lift here, baking powder notwithstanding. Sift the flour over the yolk foam and fold in large strokes, then fold the whites in with as few turns as will hide the streaks.
- Weights over cupsWork from 400 g sugar, 510 g flour, 240 ml water, 8 eggs. The stated cup counts are loose, and the flour figure in particular will overshoot badly if you measure by volume.
- Oven temperatureNone is given, as the book assumes a bakeshop oven and a cook who knows it. Use 350F for a large sheet pan, 375F for small individual molds, which bake through in about 10-12 minutes.
- Beating the yolks"Light and thick" with sugar and water takes real time — 6 to 8 minutes in a stand mixer with the whisk, until the mixture falls in a wide ribbon. Underbeaten yolks give a dense, damp layer at the bottom.
- Half a pint of waterA pint here is 16 fl oz, so half a pint is one cup. The water replaces the butter and milk of a richer cake; it makes a light, dry, faintly chewy crumb that stales quickly.
- The little joined pansThe oblong tins "joined a dozen together" are finger or sponge-cake pans, closest now to an éclair tray. Butter and a light dusting of flour will get them out cleanly.
- FlavouringThe recipe gives none. A tablespoon of lemon zest, or a teaspoon of vanilla added with the yolks, is in keeping.
- YieldRoughly a half-sheet pan (13 by 18 inches), or three to four dozen small finger cakes. Cut sheet cake only when completely cool, as the original says.
Jessup Whitehead's trade books were written for cooks in hotels, restaurants and commercial bakeshops, which is why the quantities arrive in ounces and pounds with cup equivalents tacked on for the reader working alone. "Water sponge" belongs to a family of late nineteenth-century cakes built without butter or milk — cheap and quick to scale up. The heaping teaspoon of baking powder is a period marker in itself: chemical leaveners had become cheap and dependable by the 1880s, and small quantities began appearing in cakes that had traditionally been raised by eggs alone. Being fatless, the cake goes dry within a day, which suited a shop selling out daily, and such sponges were often soaked in syrup, split with jam, or served as the base for something wetter.