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Cheap Sponge Cake
Yolks 3 eggs 1 cup sugar 1 tablespoon hot water 1 cup flour 1½ teaspoons baking powder ¼ teaspoon salt Whites 3 eggs 2 teaspoons vinegar Beat yolks of eggs until thick and lemon-colored, add sugar gradually, and continue beating; then add water, flour mixed and sifted with baking powder and salt, whites of eggs beaten until stiff, and vinegar. Bake thirty-five minutes in a moderate oven, in a buttered and floured cake pan.
A plain three-egg sponge leavened with both beaten whites and baking powder, from the era when "cheap" meant thrifty rather than poor. It comes together fast, but the order of additions is what keeps it light.
- Moderate ovenRead as roughly 350F. Thirty-five minutes suits a pan of about eight inches, though the recipe specifies no size; the cake is done when the top springs back and a skewer comes out clean.
- The salt measureThe salt quantity as printed is unclear. A quarter teaspoon is the usual proportion for a cake of this size and is the safe reading.
- Fold, do not stirThe flour and the beaten whites both go in after the yolk-sugar base is thick. Fold them in with a spatula in as few strokes as will incorporate them; beating at this stage collapses the whites and gives a tough, close-grained cake.
- Why the vinegarTwo teaspoons of vinegar added last will react with any free bicarbonate in the baking powder and may slightly tenderise the crumb. Cider or white vinegar both work, and little if any sourness is noticeable after baking.
- Hot waterThe tablespoon of hot water loosens the thick yolk-and-sugar foam so the flour can be folded in without overworking. Add it before the flour, not after.
- Beating the yolks"Thick and lemon-colored" means several minutes with an electric mixer on medium-high, until the yolks fall from the beater in a ribbon that holds briefly on the surface.
- Pan preparationButter and flour the pan as the recipe directs. If you substitute a tube pan, modern practice for foam cakes is to leave the sides ungreased so the batter can climb, though this recipe itself calls for a greased and floured pan.
- YieldThe recipe gives no pan size or yield; a batter of this size fits roughly an 8-inch pan and serves about eight. Plain sponges of this sort were commonly served with fruit, preserves or a soft custard sauce.
Sponge cakes made without butter were a standing category in nineteenth-century American cookbooks, and "cheap" here refers to economy of eggs and fat rather than of quality: it stretches a small number of eggs with a spoonful of baking powder. Chemical leaveners had been in general household use for decades, and recipes like this one show the transitional moment when cooks still whipped whites to a stiff foam but hedged the result with baking powder. The vinegar is a further hedge, giving the alkaline component of the powder something extra to react with. Cakes of this sort were everyday fare, baked for tea or split and filled, and they belong to the same thrifty impulse that produced vinegar pie and eggless gingerbread.