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Home-made Cake
Place half a pound each of sugar and butter in a bowl, mixing thoroughly with the hand for fifteen to twenty minutes; then break four eggs, leaving the whites in a basin, and drop the yolks in with the butter and sugar, mixing-again well; then beat the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth, and add to the other mixture. Grate in half a saltspoonful of nutmeg, half a pound of flour, and mix again thoroughly; stir in a couple of ounces of well-cleansed currants, and a similar quantity of blanched sweet almonds cut up into small pieces; mix well for five minutes with the hand, then pour in a gill of brandy, a little at a time. Have ready a two-quart cake-mould, drop a third of the mixture into the mould, spread over it a couple of ounces of candied orangepeel shred into thin slices, and then add half of the remaining part of the mixture; spread on top of this a couple of ounces of shredded candied citron-peel, and fill in the rest of the preparation; lay a piece of brown paper over, and place the mould in a moderate oven for two hours until it becomes a golden color, then remove, and let it cool in the mould. Turn the cake out on a dessert-dish, and decorate the top with a border composed of candied fruits, tastefully arranged.
A pound-cake batter in the old proportions — equal weights of butter, sugar, eggs and flour — with no chemical leavening at all. Everything depends on air beaten into the butter and the whites, so the two long mixing stages are the recipe, not padding.
- The hinge: aerationWith no baking powder or soda, the only lift comes from creaming and from the stiff whites. Cream the butter and sugar until visibly pale and fluffy (5-8 minutes in a stand mixer at medium, standing in for the original 15-20 by hand), and fold the whites in rather than beating them down.
- Weights, not cupsHalf a pound each of sugar, butter and flour is 225 g each — about 1 cup sugar, 2 sticks butter and roughly 1¾ cups flour. Weigh the flour if you can; scooping can add 20 percent and this batter has no leavening to carry it.
- A gill of brandyHalf a cup, 120 ml. It is a lot of liquid for this quantity of batter, which is why it goes in slowly at the end — added fast it will split the emulsion.
- SaltspoonfulA saltspoon is about ¼ teaspoon, so half of one is a scant ⅛ teaspoon of grated nutmeg. Freshly grated, as written, is noticeably different from pre-ground.
- Moderate ovenConventionally taken as about 350°F, though period usage covers roughly 325-375°F. At that heat a 2-quart mould will likely be done well before two hours; 325°F is the safer setting for a dense, deep cake, and start testing with a skewer at 75 minutes. The brown paper over the top is a scorch shield -- parchment or loosely tented foil does the same job.
- Blanched sweet almonds"Sweet" is the distinction from bitter almonds, which older kitchens used as flavouring and which are restricted from sale for eating in the US today. Ordinary blanched almonds, chopped small, are what is wanted.
- Well-cleansed currantsDried Zante currants, not fresh red or black currants. Nineteenth-century dried fruit came gritty and stemmy, hence the washing; modern packaged currants need only a rinse, and should be patted dry so they do not wet the batter.
- The layeringThe candied peel goes in bands between thirds of batter rather than mixed through; the recipe gives no reason, but banding it keeps it from sinking. Slice it thin and keep it away from the mould wall, where it will catch and stick.
- Yield and keepingA 2-quart mould gives 12 to 16 slices. Like most brandied fruit cakes it improves after a day or two wrapped tight; cool it fully in the mould as directed or the crumb will tear on turning out.
Oscar Tschirky's Cook Book (1896) ran to nearly a thousand pages and was as much a domestic reference as a record of the Waldorf's kitchen, which is why a plain "Home-made Cake" sits among the hotel's grander dishes. The formula is the old English pound cake — a pound each of butter, sugar, eggs and flour, halved here — dressed up with currants, almonds, candied citron and orange peel and a heavy dose of brandy, putting it on the border between pound cake and light fruit cake. Citron peel, the candied rind of a thick-skinned citrus grown mainly for that purpose, was a standard holiday-baking staple in American kitchens of the period. The absence of baking powder is worth noting: commercial baking powders were well established by the 1890s, yet this cake relies on beaten egg alone for lift, and the long hand-mixing the recipe calls for was the ordinary price of a fine crumb before electric mixers.