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Buttermilk Cake
Two cups sugar; one teaspoon cinnamon; one teaspoon cloves; one-half nutmeg (grated); two cups buttermilk; one teaspoon soda; one cup chopped raisins; enough flour to stiffen. Mix thoroughly and bake in a moderate oven.
A plain spiced buttermilk cake of the sort that got made when butter and eggs were wanted elsewhere. The instructions assume a cook who knows what cake batter should look like, so the flour quantity is left to judgment.
- Moderate ovenRead that as 350F. In a loaf or 9-inch square pan expect 40 to 50 minutes; test with a skewer in the center rather than trusting the clock.
- "Enough flour to stiffen"Genuinely open-ended, and the original gives no clue. With two cups of buttermilk you are in the range of four to four and a half cups of flour for a thick batter that drops heavily from the spoon; add it gradually and stop when it mounds rather than pours.
- No fat, no eggsThat is not an omission in transcription. This is a lean cake, closer in texture to a spice loaf or a soft gingerbread than to a modern butter cake. It will be moist the first day and dry quickly after; a slice spread with butter is one way to deal with that.
- Soda and buttermilkOne teaspoon of soda is the whole leavening, and it depends on the acid in the buttermilk to do most of its work. Mix and get it into the oven promptly; the reaction begins as soon as the two meet and a batter left to stand loses lift.
- Half a nutmegA whole nutmeg grates to somewhere between two and three teaspoons, so half is around one to one and a half teaspoons. Grate it fresh; pre-ground nutmeg is noticeably flatter and this cake has little else to hide behind.
- Chopped raisinsToss the cup of raisins in a spoonful of the measured flour before folding them in so they stay suspended instead of settling to the bottom.
- SaltNone is listed. Half a teaspoon makes a real difference in a cake this plain.
- YieldAbout one large loaf or a 9-inch square, twelve to sixteen servings. It cuts better fully cooled.
Buttermilk cakes belong to the era when buttermilk was a by-product rather than a purchase: whatever was left in the churn after butter came had to be used within a day or two, and its acidity paired with baking soda gave a reliable rise before commercial baking powder was universal. The Butterick Publishing Company was primarily a pattern and magazine house, and its cookbooks, issued in the decades around the turn of the twentieth century, reflect the same audience: home managers who wanted dependable everyday baking that did not depend on an expensive larder.