Pound Cake
Take one pound and fourteen ounces of powdered sugar, one pound and two ounces of butter, twelve eggs and 1½ pints milk, three-quarters ounce of baking powder, three and one-half pounds of flour (sifted); beat the eggs to a froth, rub sugar, butter and eggs together; then let stand till stiff and beat in milk, and, last of all, the flour.
This is a bakery-scale formula that has drifted a long way from the classic four-equal-pounds ratio, and at least one quantity is a printer's error. Read the notes before scaling anything.
- The milk is a misprintTwelve pints of milk against three and a half pounds of flour would produce a thin batter, not a cake. The intended figure is almost certainly half a pint (one cup), or possibly one and a half pints; the original as printed cannot be made. Treat the liquid as the one quantity you must judge by eye, adding only enough to loosen the creamed mixture.
- "Powdered sugar" means fine granulatedIn cookbooks of this period powdered sugar is granulated sugar ground finer, not the modern confectioners' sugar cut with cornstarch. Use caster or ordinary granulated sugar; today's powdered sugar will change both texture and sweetness.
- ScaleThree and a half pounds of flour is roughly 12 to 13 cups. With the sugar, butter and eggs this comes to something over eight pounds of batter, enough for four large loaves or two tube pans plus a loaf. Quartering the recipe (a scant 14 oz flour, 7 1/2 oz sugar, 4 1/2 oz butter, 3 eggs, about 1/4 cup milk) gives one 9x5 loaf.
- No oven temperature is givenA rich, dense batter of this size wants 325F. Loaves take about an hour to an hour and a quarter; a tube pan closer to an hour and a half. A skewer should come out clean and the cake pull slightly from the sides.
- "Let stand till stiff"This most likely means resting the creamed sugar, butter and egg mixture until it firms up and holds its shape rather than looking curdled or soupy. In a modern kitchen, cream the butter and sugar first, then beat in the frothed eggs a little at a time so the emulsion never breaks; a short rest in a cool room does the same work.
- Baking powderThree-quarters of an ounce is about four and a half teaspoons across three and a half pounds of flour, which is a light hand and appropriate. True pound cake is leavened only by air beaten into the butter and eggs; the powder here is insurance against a heavy crumb.
- Order of mixingFlour goes in last and should be folded, not beaten. Once the flour is in, work the batter as little as possible or the cake turns tough and tunnels.
- StoragePound cake of this richness improves after a day wrapped tightly, and it keeps well at room temperature and freezes.
The name is literal: the original pound cake, recorded in English and American cookery books from the eighteenth century onward, took a pound each of butter, sugar, eggs and flour, with no leavening beyond the air beaten in by hand. By the later nineteenth century the proportions had loosened and chemical baking powder had become cheap and general, so the formula here carries more flour than butter and a small measure of powder to lift it.