Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Nut Cake
Nut Cake
Warm one teacupful of butter in a basin, beat to a cream, and add gradually one breakfast cupful of sugar. When the mixture is quite light and frothy, stir in two well-beaten eggs, then a teacupful of milk, add two breakfast cupfuls of flour with one teaspoonful of cream of tartar and half a teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda. Now work in quickly one breakfast cupful each of stoned raisins and blanched nuts very finely chopped, turn the mixture into well-greased deep baking-pans, and bake in a moderate oven for thirty-five minutes. Turn it out when done, and serve cold. One and one-half teaspoonfuls of baking-powder may be substituted for the cream of tartar and soda if preferred.
Orange Cake (Large).
Sift three-fourths of a pound of flour on a paste-board, cut eight ounces of butter into small pieces, lay them on the flour and work them in; add four ounces each of sugar and blanched and pounded almonds, the yolks of four hard-boiled eggs that have been rubbed through a fine sieve, three well-beaten eggs, and sufficient milk to form a smooth paste. Knead the paste until all the ingredients are thoroughly mixed, and then roll out as thin as possible without breaking. Cut it to a round shape, lay it on a sheet of buttered paper on a baking-slab, roll the trimmings of the paste out into a long strip, cut it lengthwise into three, and plait them. Moisten round the edges of the cake with a paste-brush dipped in milk, and lay the plait round. Bake the paste until lightly browned in a moderate oven. Beat the yolks of three eggs together with the grated peel and strained juice of three oranges, four ounces of sugar, and one ounce of butter broken into small pieces. Turn the mixture into a lined stewpan, and whisk it over a slow fire until it thickens, but on no account let it boil, or the eggs will curdle: then move it away from the fire and let it cool. Whisk the whites of the eggs to a stiff snow, and stir them lightly in with the yolks. When the crust is nearly cold, spread the mixture over it, garnish in a circle with quarters of oranges from which all the white pith has been removed, pile a few tablespoonfuls of well-whipped cream in the center, and serve.
Two cakes run together on one page: a plain fruit-and-nut butter cake, and a much more ambitious orange pastry with a cooked curd topping. The measurements are late-Victorian household cups rather than standard measures, so treat the ratios as the guide.
- Teacup vs. breakfast cupThese are not the same vessel. A teacupful is usually reckoned at roughly 3/4 cup and a breakfast cupful at a full cup or a little more, though neither was standardised. On that reading the recipe gives about 3/4 cup butter, 1 cup sugar, 3/4 cup milk (a teacupful, not a breakfast cupful) and 2 cups or more of flour.
- Moderate ovenConventionally read as about 350F, though no temperature is given. Thirty-five minutes suggests fairly shallow pans; the deep pans the recipe calls for will likely need longer, so test with a skewer.
- Cream of tartar and sodaThe 2:1 ratio given is the conventional single-acting substitute for baking powder, and 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder is a reasonable stand-in (standard equivalences run a little higher). With cream of tartar and soda the batter should go into the oven at once, since the gas begins to escape as soon as acid and soda meet the liquid.
- Blanched nutsUnspecified; almonds are the likeliest reading of 'blanched,' though other nuts were used in cakes of this kind. Chop them fine, as directed.
- Flour by weight in the orange cakeThree-quarters of a pound of flour is about 3 cups; eight ounces of butter is two sticks. That is a rich short paste, closer to a sweet pastry than a cake, and it wants to be kept cold and rolled quickly.
- Sieved hard-boiled yolksNot an error. Cooked yolks rubbed through a sieve add fat and tenderness without adding water, a technique found in some rich pastes before modern shortcrusts. Easiest to push them through while still warm.
- Baking-slab and buttered paperA baking sheet lined with parchment. No time or temperature is given for the paste; bake until lightly browned, and let it cool before spreading the mixture, as the recipe directs ('nearly cold').
- The curd is the hingeWhisk the yolks, juice, zest, sugar and butter over low heat until it thickens and no further. The instruction not to let it boil is the whole of it; once it breaks, no amount of whisking will bring it back. A bowl over simmering water is easier to control than a pan on direct heat.
- The raw whitesThe whipped whites folded into the cooled curd are never cooked, and the finished topping is served as is. Use pasteurized whites, or leave them out and spread the curd alone, if the cake is for anyone who should avoid raw egg.
Oscar Tschirky's 1896 book is less a personal manuscript than a compilation, and this page shows it: the vocabulary of "breakfast cupful," "bicarbonate of soda," "paste-board" and "baking-slab" is English household usage rather than New York hotel usage. The nut cake itself is a familiar sort of American plain cake, a creamed butter batter leavened with cream of tartar and soda, the pairing that commercial baking powder was in the process of replacing; that Oscar bothers to give the baking-powder equivalent marks the moment when the tinned product had become common enough to assume in a kitchen but not yet universal. The orange cake is a much older idea, a thin rich paste with a plaited border and a cooked orange curd spread over it after baking, closer to a tart than to anything a modern reader would call a layer cake, and its pastry is enriched with sieved hard-boiled yolks.