Quick Loaf Cake
One egg; one-half cup of butter; one and one-half cups of sugar; one cup of milk; two and one-half cups of flour; one and one-half teaspoons of baking powder; one-half nutmeg grated; one-half teaspoon vanilla; one cup of seeded raisins; and a pinch of salt.
This is an ingredient list with the method left to the cook's judgment, as was normal in 1911 for a cake this plain. Treat it as a standard creamed butter cake and the proportions work out.
- The method it assumesCream the butter and sugar, beat in the egg, then add the sifted flour, baking powder and salt alternately with the milk. Fold in the nutmeg, vanilla and raisins last.
- Oven and panNo temperature, pan or time is given at all. A greased 9x5-inch loaf pan at 350F for roughly 50 to 65 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean, suits a batter of this size; a fruited loaf wants a gentler oven so the crust does not set before the centre.
- Half a nutmegA whole nutmeg grates down to roughly 2 to 3 teaspoons, so half is about 1 to 1.5 teaspoons of freshly grated nutmeg. That is assertive by current taste, and 1 teaspoon is enough for most palates.
- Seeded raisins'Seeded' meant the seeds had been removed, by hand or by seeder at home, though by this date seeded raisins were also sold ready packaged. Modern seedless raisins go straight in; toss them with a spoonful of the measured flour so they do not sink.
- Leavening runs lightOne and a half teaspoons of baking powder for two and a half cups of flour is lean by modern standards, and the single egg does little lifting. Expect a close, firm, pound-cake crumb rather than a fluffy one; that is the intended texture of a loaf cake.
- Butter measureHalf a cup is one stick, 4 ounces. Have it properly soft, not melted, or the creaming will not hold enough air to carry the fruit.
- Yield and keepingOne loaf, about ten to twelve slices. A close, buttery crumb like this holds well, and it is good sliced thin, plain or buttered, a day after baking.
"Quick" here is doing real work: loaf cake in nineteenth-century American kitchens was frequently a yeast-raised affair, mixed with a sponge and left to rise for hours before baking, which is why some books distinguish a quick loaf cake from the older kind. Canned baking powder, which came into commercial use over the later decades of the century though its quality long remained uneven, collapsed that whole process into an afternoon, and by the time the Butterick Publishing Company issued its cook book the yeast version is generally thought to have receded from the household repertoire. The dish itself belongs to the vast family of plain fruited butter cakes -- raisins, nutmeg, a little vanilla -- kept on hand for tea, lunch pails and unexpected callers. Butterick sold sewing patterns and women's magazines, and its cook book was aimed squarely at that readership: cakes that could be made from pantry staples, without a trip to the shops and without a second egg.