Lemon Cake
Two scant cupfuls of sugar, one-half of a cupful of butter, three eggs, two and one-half cups of flour one cup of milk, two rounding teaspoonfuls of baking powder, grated rind of lemon and one-half teaspoonful of salt. Beat the butter with half the sugar, then add gradually the remainder of sugar, with the well-beaten eggs; put in the grated lemon rind, being careful not to use any of the white rith. Lastly stir in the flour with which the baking powder and salt have been sifted, alternately with the milk. Bake about forty minutes in a moderate oven and cover with lemon frosting.
A plain butter cake scented only with lemon zest — the flavour depends entirely on how the rind is handled and on not overworking the batter once the flour goes in.
- Oven temperatureA "moderate oven" in books of this period is usually taken to mean roughly 350°F (175°C). The recipe names no tin; forty minutes at that heat would suit a single 9-inch round or an 8-inch square, with thinner layers needing rather less.
- The lemon rind is the whole recipeThere is no juice, no extract and no vanilla, so the zest carries all the flavour. Take only the yellow, as the book says — the white pith beneath is bitter — and rub the zest into the sugar with your fingers before creaming so the oils are released into the fat.
- "Scant" and "rounding"A scant cup is filled just below the rim, roughly 15 ml short; two scant cups of sugar is about 380 g. A rounding teaspoon is heaped slightly above level, so the two teaspoons of baking powder come to nearer 2½ level teaspoons — a normal amount for 2½ cups of flour.
- FlourHousehold flour of the period was often softer than modern all-purpose. Cake flour, or all-purpose with two tablespoons per cup replaced by cornstarch, may give a crumb closer to what the writer expected.
- Creaming orderThe instruction to beat butter with half the sugar first, then add the rest with the beaten eggs, may have been a guard against curdling when creaming by hand. A stand mixer handles it fine: cream butter and all the sugar for three or four minutes, then add the eggs one at a time.
- Alternating flour and milkAdd the dry mixture in three parts and the milk in two, beginning and ending with flour, and stop mixing the moment the last streak disappears. Overbeating after the baking powder is wetted costs you the rise.
- Lemon frostingThe book assumes you know one. A simple version is about 2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar beaten with 2–3 tablespoons lemon juice and a little zest, spread on the cake once it is fully cold.
- YieldRoughly 12 servings from a single 9-inch cake, or 10 from a two-layer cake.
Bridal and "housekeeper's" cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries often carried a lemon cake: a butter cake leaning on chemical leavening, with grated rind standing in for the expensive flavouring extracts. Baking powder is generally reckoned to have become a reliable commercial commodity by around the 1870s, which is why a book aimed at inexperienced cooks could promise a dependable cake without the beaten-egg gymnastics of earlier sponge recipes. The careful warning against the white pith is a small sign of the audience.