Orange Cake
One cup white sugar, one small half cup butter, two cups flour, one-half cup water, five eggs and two teaspoonfuls of baking powder, juice and rind of one orange; bake like jelly cake; frost each layer; make frosting of the remaining white.
A plain butter-and-egg layer cake flavored with a single orange, written for a cook who already knew what "jelly cake" meant. A few of its instructions assume knowledge the page does not supply.
- "Bake like jelly cake"Jelly cake means thin layers baked in shallow round tins and stacked with filling between. This batter should make roughly three thin 8-inch layers; thin layers bake in about 15-20 minutes rather than the 30-plus a single deep cake would want.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given because the book assumes a wood or coal range judged by hand. Bake at 350F, or 375F if your layers are very thin, and test with a skewer at the center.
- The eggs are meant to be splitFive eggs go in, yet frosting is made "of the remaining white" — so at least one white was held back. How many is not stated; the singular phrasing suggests one. Reserve what you need for the icing and put the rest in the batter; there is no leavening beyond the baking powder.
- "One small half cup butter"A scant half cup, roughly 3 ounces or about 6 tablespoons, rather than a full stick. The phrasing is a period way of saying a short measure, and the cake is leaner than a pound-cake style batter.
- Orange rindGrate only the colored zest and rub it into the sugar before creaming; the white pith is bitter, and rubbing releases the oils that carry most of the flavor. If your orange is small, use the zest of two.
- Liquid balanceHalf a cup of water plus the juice of an orange is a good deal of thin liquid for two cups of flour. If the batter seems slack, measure the juice and reduce the water accordingly.
- Baking powderTwo teaspoons to two cups of flour is still standard, but period baking powders were single-acting and varied in strength. Get the batter into the oven promptly rather than letting it stand.
- The frosting is uncookedWhites beaten raw with sugar was the ordinary layer-cake icing of the period. If the cake is for someone pregnant, elderly, or immune-compromised, use pasteurized whites or a cooked meringue-style icing instead.
- YieldThree thin layers, serving 8 to 10. It stales quickly, as eggy butter cakes with a soft icing do — best the day it is made.
Orange cake appears in American cookbooks of the later nineteenth century, and improving winter shipments of Florida and California fruit are usually credited with helping make a whole orange an affordable flavoring rather than a luxury. The "jelly cake" method it borrows — thin layers baked in shallow tins and stacked with something sweet between — was a common American layer-cake technique of the century, predating the tall deep-pan cakes we now default to. Like many recipes of its kind, it names its ingredients precisely and then leaves method, pan size, oven heat, and the handling of the eggs entirely to inherited knowledge.