One Egg Cake
One cup of sugar; one cup of milk; two cups of flour; one egg; two teaspoons of baking powder; three tablespoons of melted butter. Place the melted butter and the sugar together, and stir well; then add the beaten egg and the milk. Sift the baking powder and flour together, and add them, beating vigorously. Bake in one loaf for one-half hour in a rather quick oven.
ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR CAKE-(Sometimes called "Measure Cake")-One cup of butter; two of sugar; three of flour; four eggs; one cup of milk; three teaspoons baking powder. Cream the butter and sugar, add the eggs, moisten gradually with the milk, and stir in the flour sifted with the baking powder. Flavor as desired.
Two plain butter cakes built on ratios rather than pans and timers, from the era when a cook was expected to know her own oven. Both work today with small adjustments.
- "A rather quick oven"A quick oven is usually given as about 400-425F, so "rather quick" sits somewhere near 400F. Thirty minutes at that heat will darken the crust before the centre sets in a deep pan; 350-375F for 35-45 minutes, testing with a skewer, gives a better result in a modern oven.
- Pan size"one loaf" for a batter of two cups flour means a standard 8x4 or 9x5 loaf pan, greased and floured. The one-two-three-four cake makes roughly twice the batter: two 9-inch round layers, a 9x13, or a tube pan.
- No salt, no flavouringNeither recipe calls for salt; butter of the period was commonly salted, which may be why none is specified. Add half a teaspoon to the flour if using unsalted butter. "Flavor as desired" means a teaspoon or two of vanilla, lemon zest, or a little grated nutmeg stirred in with the milk.
- Measuring the flourPeriod flour was generally softer and weaker than most modern all-purpose, and how a cup was measured varied from book to book. Weigh at about 4 1/4 oz (120 g) per cup, and expect a slightly firmer crumb than the original; cake flour brings it closer.
- Melted butter versus creamedThe one-egg cake melts the butter and stirs it with the sugar, which gives a denser, more muffin-like crumb than creaming does. The recipe's "beating vigorously" after the flour goes in is what brings the batter together, but stop as soon as it is smooth.
- Order of mixing, one-two-three-fourAdd the four eggs one at a time to the creamed butter and sugar, then alternate the milk and the flour in three or four additions. Dumping a full cup of milk into a creamed mixture at once will curdle it.
- Baking powderBoth call for one teaspoon per cup of flour, close to the modern standard. Early twentieth-century powders were often single-acting, so batter would have needed to reach the oven promptly, less of a concern with today's double-acting powder.
- YieldThe one-egg cake makes a single small loaf, eight to ten slices. The one-two-three-four makes a full layer cake serving twelve to sixteen, and takes 25-30 minutes at 350F as two rounds, longer in a tube pan.
The one-egg cake belongs to a whole genre of thrift baking that filled American cookbooks once chemical leavening became cheap and reliable: eggs were the expensive item, and a cake that needed only one, stretched with baking powder and milk, was a weekday cake rather than a company one. One-two-three-four cake is a mnemonic ratio, generally understood as a descendant of the English pound cake (a pound each of butter, sugar, flour and eggs), lightened by cutting the butter and adding milk and baking powder. The alternative name given here, "Measure Cake," points to the same idea: the proportions are the recipe.