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Citron Pound Cake
Have a well-heated oven, cut one-fourth pound of candied citron into small pieces. Line with buttered-paper two cake tins. Sift one pound or so of flour. Place one pound of butter in a large bowl, work it to a cream and beat in the following ingredients each in turn; one pound each of powdered sugar and flour, one teaspoonful of salt, one wineglass of brandy and eight eggs; then add the citron and bake the cake in a hot oven for about forty-five minutes, or until a straw can be thrust into it and drawn out without being sticky.
A true pound cake in the old proportion — a pound each of butter, sugar, flour and (in eggs) weight — with no chemical leavening at all. Everything depends on how much air you beat into the butter and eggs.
- Ignore the "hot oven"Period usage varies, but a "hot oven" is generally reckoned somewhere around 400-450F, which will set the crust long before a cake this dense cooks through. Bake at 325F; the batter is too rich and too heavy to survive high heat.
- Time is understatedTime is probably understated -- divided between two tins, expect appreciably longer than forty-five minutes at 325F. Use the straw (or a skewer) test the recipe gives, and start checking at 55 minutes.
- A wineglass of brandyRoughly 2 fluid ounces, or 1/4 cup. Any drinkable brandy or cognac works; it is there for flavour, not moisture.
- "One pound or so of flour"Weigh it: 1 lb is about 3 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour, and cups measured by scoop can run 15 percent heavy, which turns this cake dry. Sift after weighing, as directed.
- EggsEight large eggs come to about 14 ounces out of the shell, a little short of the classic pound-for-pound ratio. Add them one at a time and beat each in fully before the next, or the butter emulsion will break and the crumb will go coarse.
- Candied citronThe peel of Citrus medica, sold in blocks or diced with the holiday fruit. It is firmer and less sweet than candied orange peel. Toss the pieces in a spoonful of the sifted flour so they suspend rather than sink.
- Buttered paperParchment cut to fit the tin, buttered on both sides, does exactly what the original intends. A cake with this much sugar and butter will otherwise weld itself to the pan.
- YieldAbout 4 1/2 lb of batter. The recipe specifies only "two cake tins"; two 9x5-inch loaf tins filled two-thirds give roughly 20 generous slices. Cool completely before cutting; pound cake slices badly warm and improves on the second day.
Pound cake takes its name from the formula rather than any place or cook: a pound each of butter, sugar, flour and eggs, a proportion recorded in English cookery from the early eighteenth century and easy to remember in kitchens where recipes passed by word of mouth. It predates reliable chemical leavening, so all its lift comes from creamed butter and beaten eggs, which is why the instructions dwell on working the butter and adding ingredients one at a time. Candied citron was a common "rich" addition in American baking well into the twentieth century, arriving in blocks from Mediterranean trade and appearing in fruitcakes, mincemeat and holiday breads. A well-wrapped pound cake was expected to keep, though a single wineglass of brandy in this quantity of batter is doing far more for flavour than for preservation. The recipe comes from Oscar Tschirky's collection, associated with the Waldorf.