Angel Cake
9 egg-whites
7/8 cup flour
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
⅛ teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
Beat the whites of the eggs to a froth, add the cream of tartar and beat till the eggs are stiff but not dry, then gradually add the sugar (which has been sifted twice), beating after additions. Sift the flour with the salt five times and fold it into the mixture. Add the vanilla. Bake in an ungreased angel-cake tin in a very moderate oven (250-320° F.) for forty-five minutes. Be careful not to jar or disturb while baking. Remove from the oven, turn the pan upside down on a wire netting or with a knife handle or some other small article inserted under the edge of the pan to permit steam to escape, and let it stand until the cake falls out. Ice placed on the bottom of the tin will hasten the release of the cake.
A textbook angel food cake, dependent entirely on beaten whites — there is no chemical leavening in it at all. Most of the fussy detail in the original still earns its place; a few instructions can be shortened.
- The hinge: never grease the panThe batter climbs the sides of the tin as it sets, and grease or a nonstick coating gives it nothing to grip. Use a plain aluminum tube pan with a removable bottom, not springform, not silicone, and do not line it.
- Oven temperatureThe stated 250-320F is a wide range, of the kind period books used for broad heat descriptions rather than a dial setting. Bake at 325F, a touch above the range given, and expect 40 to 45 minutes; the cake is done when the top springs back and a skewer comes out clean.
- Flour7/8 cup means one cup less two tablespoons, roughly 100 g. Cake flour is what this needs — soft, low-protein, finely milled. Sifting five times is about aerating and de-lumping, not measuring; two or three passes through a fine sieve with modern flour does the same work.
- Egg whitesNine large whites come to about 1 1/8 cups, roughly 270 g. Weigh or measure rather than counting, since egg sizes have drifted. Separate them cold, then let them stand at room temperature for half an hour; a trace of yolk or fat will keep them from reaching full volume.
- "Stiff but not dry"The most useful phrase in the recipe. Stop when the peaks hold but the surface still looks glossy and moist. Overbeaten whites break into a grainy, curd-like mass and the cake will not rise.
- SugarOne cup of granulated, sifted, folds in more readily if it is superfine (caster). Add it in a slow stream while beating so it dissolves rather than sitting as grit.
- Cooling and releaseInvert immediately and leave it inverted until completely cool, an hour or more — a warm angel cake collapses under its own weight. The ice on the pan bottom is the book's own suggestion and is in any case unnecessary; run a thin knife around the sides once cool.
- YieldA standard 9- or 10-inch tube pan, 10 to 12 servings. It stales quickly; serve within a day or two.
Angel cake, or angel food cake, appears in American cookbooks in the second half of the nineteenth century, and it depends on two things arriving at once: cheap finely milled white flour and the geared rotary egg beater, which made whipping nine whites a matter of minutes rather than a long arm-aching job with a bundle of twigs or a fork. Cream of tartar, a byproduct of winemaking and widely sold by then, both stabilizes the foam and keeps the crumb white. The name is usually explained by the cake's pallor and lightness, in contrast to the yolk-rich gold cakes that often sat beside it in the same chapter — a household that made one had a bowl of the other's leftovers to use up. The book includes it as a standard of the cake repertoire rather than a novelty, with the careful warnings about jarring the oven and inverting the pan.