Lady Cake
Take one-half cup of butter; one and one-half cups of granulated sugar; one cup of lukewarm water; two and one-half cups of sifted flour; four eggs; whites only; one lemon, juice and rind, or two teaspoons of vanilla; two teaspoons of baking powder. Cream the butter in an earthenware dish with a silver spoon, stirring it until it is a light-colored cream; and then add the sugar, beating thoroughly. Sift the flour, and add one-half of it and the cup of water, adding a little water, then some flour, and so on in alternation. Beat the whites of the eggs stiff and dry, add one-half of them and then the rest of the flour. Again beat well, and add the juice and grated rind of the lemon, or the vanilla, as preferred, and next the baking powder and the balance of the beaten whites. Turn quickly into a deep, well-buttered tin and bake for three-fourths of an hour. The tin should be ready to use before the baking powder is placed in the cake, as the batter would rise during a slight delay and the good of the baking powder would be lost. When the cake is cold, cover with frosting.
A plain white butter cake, leavened with egg whites and baking powder and given no oven temperature at all, as was normal in a book written for coal and wood ranges. A few adjustments bring it into line with a modern kitchen.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A cake of this size and richness wants a moderate oven, 350F, for the stated three-quarters of an hour. Test with a skewer at 40 minutes.
- The tin"A deep, well-buttered tin" suggests a single deep round of about 9 inches, or a tube pan. Butter it and line the base with parchment.
- Baking powder lastThis is the instruction the recipe itself flags, and it reflects an era when baking powders were less stable. Modern double-acting powder does not lose its lift while you find a pan, and it disperses far better sifted with the flour at the start. If you follow the original order, sprinkle it over the batter and fold gently rather than beating it in.
- Egg whites"Stiff and dry" is over-beaten by current standards; whites taken to the dry, grainy stage break down and fold in as lumps. Beat to firm peaks that still look glossy, and fold rather than stir.
- Water, not milkThe cup of lukewarm water suits a cake meant to be pale, though other lady cake recipes of the period do use milk. As written, the recipe needs no dairy beyond the butter.
- Earthenware and a silver spoonPresumably specified to avoid the off-flavours or discolouration that iron and tinned utensils could give a delicate white batter. A glass or ceramic bowl serves the same purpose; a stand mixer with the paddle will cream the butter and sugar in three or four minutes.
- FlavouringOne lemon's juice and zest is a lot of acid for this batter and will make it slightly tender and tangy; two teaspoons of vanilla gives the more familiar result. Zest alone, without the juice, is a good middle course.
- Yield and finishingServes about 10 to 12. The four leftover yolks keep a day or two covered in the refrigerator and go to custard or curd. "Frosting" at this date most likely indicates a plain white boiled or confectioners'-sugar icing rather than buttercream.
Lady cake is the pale counterpart to the dark, spice-and-fruit-heavy cakes that dominated earlier baking, and the pairing with "gentleman's cake" or the darker groom's cake was common in American and English books through the nineteenth century. Whiteness was the whole ambition: white sugar, white flour, whites of eggs only, no milk to yellow the crumb, and often bitter almond rather than lemon for flavour. It signalled expense, since refined sugar and bolted flour cost money and a cook who could throw away four yolks was not economising. That the Butterick book, published by a pattern company for a broad domestic readership, includes it alongside plainer cakes shows how far chemically leavened baking with commercial baking powder had spread by the turn of the century. The anxious note about not letting the batter stand is a holdover from the years when single-acting powders and homemade saleratus-and-cream-of-tartar mixtures really did spend their lift on the counter.