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Lemon Cake
Beat one-half pound of powdered sugar together with the yolks of six eggs; when smooth add the whites previously whisked to a stiff froth, then stir in slowly seven or eight tablespoonfuls of flour and the grated peel of a large lemon. Line a cake-tin with buttered paper, pour the mixture in, and bake for one hour in a moderate oven.
A fatless sponge in the old style: six eggs, sugar, flour, lemon zest, and nothing else. Everything depends on how much air you keep in the eggs, since there is no baking powder to rescue you.
- The hingeAll the lift comes from the beaten whites, so fold rather than stir despite the wording. Sift the flour over the surface in three additions and cut it through with a spatula until barely combined; the batter should still hold ribbons when you stop.
- "Powdered sugar"In 1896 this meant granulated sugar ground fine, not modern confectioners' sugar with its cornstarch. Use caster or ordinary granulated sugar: half a pound is about 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons.
- Flour measureSeven or eight tablespoonfuls is just under to a full 1/2 cup, roughly 2 to 2 1/4 ounces of flour for six eggs. That is deliberately little; the cake is meant to be light rather than close-textured. Plain all-purpose flour, sifted, is the reasonable choice.
- Beating the yolks"Beat until smooth" undersells it. Work the yolks and sugar until pale, thick, and falling in a ribbon, five to eight minutes with an electric mixer, or the cake will bake dense at the base.
- Oven temperatureA moderate oven is usually rendered as somewhere around 350F, though the term was never that precise. For a sponge this lean, 325F to 335F is safer, giving a more even rise and less risk of a hard crust before the centre sets.
- TimingOne hour is likely longer than a modern oven needs, and the recipe does not say what size tin. In a 9-inch tin expect nearer 30 to 40 minutes; test with a skewer from about 28 minutes and take it out as soon as it comes clean.
- The tin'Buttered paper' means plain paper rubbed with butter; parchment is the modern equivalent. Line the base of a 9-inch round or an 8-inch square tin and butter the sides only lightly, so the batter can grip and climb. Do not use a nonstick pan sprayed with oil.
- Lemon peelGrate only the yellow zest of one large lemon; any white pith turns bitter through an hour's heat. Rubbing the zest into the sugar first before adding the yolks releases more of the oil.
- Yield and servingAbout ten slices. It is a plain teacake, best the day it is made, with berries and cream or a spoonful of lemon curd; it goes dry by the second day.
This belongs to the standard European sponge family of the nineteenth century — the group that includes the Italian pan di Spagna, the French biscuit de Savoie and the English Savoy or sponge cake — in which whipped eggs do all the work that butter and chemical leaveners do in an American layer cake. Oscar Tschirky's collection, published in 1896, was assembled while he was maître d'hôtel of the Waldorf, and its recipes are written sparely: quantities by the half pound, flour by the tablespoon, and little explanation of technique. A sponge of this kind, carrying no butter and needing no icing, serves as a base for trifles, charlottes and iced puddings as well as a plain cake for tea. Sponges are generally traced to the sixteenth-century Italian and Spanish courts, and were among the first cakes raised by beaten egg rather than yeast.