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Raisin Cake
Put one pound of butter into a basin to warm, beat it to a cream and add gradually one pound of sifted flour, the same weight of crushed loaf sugar and the yolks of half a dozen eggs. Stir these well, and when thoroughly mixed, add one wineglassful of brandy, a grated nutmeg, one teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda dissolved in one tablespoonful of water, and finally the whites of the six eggs whipped to a firm froth. Work until the mixture has a light creamy appearance, then add one pound of stoned-raisins finely-chopped and sprinkle over with one breakfast cupful of flour to make them mix more easily. Pour the cake mixture into a tin or mould lined with well-buttered paper and bake it for an hour and a half, when done, turn it out and it is ready for use. A few rose-leaves steeped in brandy will add to the flavor of the cake.
A pound cake in the literal sense: a pound each of butter, flour, sugar and fruit, leavened mostly by air beaten into the eggs. The original gives no oven temperature and no tin size, so those are the two things to settle before you start.
- Oven temperatureNone is stated in the original. A cake of this density baked for an hour and a half suits a slow-to-moderate oven, in the region of 325F, with the top loosely covered with foil if it colours before the centre sets.
- Loaf sugarSugar was sold as a hard cone and broken up at home; "crushed loaf sugar" is simply granulated white sugar. Use it by weight, one pound, not by cup.
- WineglassfulA wineglass in period cookbooks is roughly 2 fluid ounces, a quarter cup. Not the modern stemware measure.
- Breakfast cupfulAbout 8 to 10 fluid ounces. Here it is only the dusting flour tossed with the raisins to keep them suspended, so an ordinary cup is close enough; use it from the pound of flour rather than in addition, or the crumb turns dry.
- Bicarbonate of sodaA teaspoon of soda with no acid in the batter beyond a little brandy will not leaven much and can leave a soapy note. The real lift comes from the creamed butter and the whipped whites, so fold those in gently and do not beat them down.
- Butter "in a basin to warm"This means softened to about 65F, not melted. Melted butter will not hold air and the cake will bake heavy and greasy.
- Tin and liningRoughly five pounds of batter. Use a 10-inch tube pan or two 9-by-5 loaf tins, lined with buttered parchment as the original directs. A single deep tin will need the longer end of the baking time; test with a skewer.
- Rose leavesPeriod usage means the petals, not the foliage. Steep unsprayed petals from a scented garden rose in the brandy for an hour and strain; florist roses are treated and unsuitable.
- Yield and keepingTwenty or more slices. Like other rich fruited pound cakes it is usually better after a day or two wrapped closely, and it should keep for several days at cool room temperature.
Oscar Tschirky's 1896 collection gathers a great deal of nineteenth-century English and American domestic cookery alongside the Waldorf's restaurant repertoire, and this reads as belonging to the older domestic tradition rather than to hotel practice: the "pound cake" formula of equal weights, enriched with dried fruit and spirits, of a kind English cookbooks had been printing since the eighteenth century. The details are period markers: loaf sugar broken from a cone, a wineglass as a unit, a whole nutmeg grated fresh, and a tin lined with buttered paper. The teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda does little leavening here; soda became common in home baking after chemical raising agents grew cheap in the middle of the nineteenth century, and it turns up in recipes that do not strictly need it. The brandy-steeped rose petals belong to an older English taste for floral flavourings, rosewater above all, which by this date survived mainly in cakes and preserves.