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Spice Cakes
Put one and one-fourth pound of flour in a basin and rub in one pound of butter with the hands until smooth, mix in one pound of well washed currants, one-fourth pound of moist sugar, one-third of a tablespoonful of pounded spice, one-half tablespoonful of yeast that has been dissolved in a little warm water, the beaten yolks of two and the white of one egg, together with one wineglassful of brandy. Stir the ingredients well and stand the mixture close to the fire, where it will rise for thirty minutes or so. Divide the cake mixture into small portions, mould these into nicely-shaped cakes, place them on baking-sheets and bake in a moderate oven. Leave the cakes until cold, then pile them on a dish, and serve.
Sponge-Cakes, Large Boil one pound of lump sugar in a teacupful of boiling water, and when boiling pour it over six eggs, whisk for half an hour; sift in slowly two tablespoonfuls of flour, grate the rind of one lemon and mix in. When well worked together put in a greased mould of any suitable shape and bake for three-quarters of an hour, or a little longer if required.
Two English-style cakes from Oscar's Waldorf files, both written in the shorthand of a professional kitchen that assumed a scale, a fire and a strong arm. The spice cakes are yeast-raised rather than chemically leavened, which is the thing to understand before you start.
- Yeast, not baking powderThe half tablespoon of yeast is presumably compressed fresh yeast, on the order of 1/4 oz, roughly equal to 3/4-1 teaspoon of instant dry yeast; barm or brewer's yeast is also possible in a recipe of this vintage. With a pound of butter to a pound and a quarter of flour the dough is very short and the rise will be modest — expect a slightly open, biscuit-like crumb, not a bread rise.
- "Close to the fire"A warm spot, appreciably warmer than a cool kitchen; the recipe gives no temperature. Thirty minutes is all a dough this rich and this lightly yeasted is likely to give you; longer proofing mostly softens the butter into a greasy mass.
- Moist sugarVictorian "moist sugar" is unrefined or partly refined soft sugar — light brown sugar is the closest modern match. Quarter pound is 1/2 cup packed, which makes these far less sweet than a modern cookie.
- Pounded spiceMixed spice: predominantly cinnamon and nutmeg with allspice, clove and often coriander or mace. A third of a tablespoon is about 1 teaspoon.
- WineglassfulRoughly 2 fl oz of brandy. It also serves as liquid here, so do not omit it without replacing the volume.
- CurrantsDried currants, not fresh red currants. "Well washed" mattered when fruit arrived gritty and sanded; rinse and dry thoroughly today only if the fruit is dusty, as wet currants will streak the dough.
- Oven and yieldA moderate oven is usually read as about 350F. Small moulded cakes of this richness take roughly 15-20 minutes and should be pulled while pale gold. With a pound and a quarter of flour and a pound each of butter and fruit, the batch makes a few dozen small cakes, depending on how large they are moulded.
- The sponge cake's flourTwo tablespoonfuls of flour against a pound of sugar and six eggs is very low even for a hot-syrup sponge; the amount as printed is likely an error or a much larger old-fashioned spoon, and a cake made literally to these proportions will be closer to a meringue than a sponge. Treat it as ambiguous rather than converting it.
- Half an hour of whiskingThe point is to beat the boiling syrup into the eggs until the mixture is cool, pale and holds a ribbon. A stand mixer does it in 10-12 minutes. The recipe names no oven temperature; a moderate oven of roughly 325-350F suits, and the stated three-quarters of an hour is when to test with a skewer.
Oscar Tschirky's 1896 Cook Book is less a single chef's manuscript than a vast compilation — several thousand recipes drawn from the Waldorf's kitchens and from the standard European repertoire of the day — which is why an English yeast-raised currant cake sits here beside a French-method sponge. Yeast-leavened small cakes like these are the older tradition: before baking powder became reliable and cheap in the second half of the nineteenth century, rich cakes were raised with ale barm or brewer's yeast, and the resulting texture is closer to a rock cake or a Bath bun than to anything from a modern cookie sheet. The brandy did double duty as flavouring and as insurance, since alcohol and a heavy load of butter and dried fruit kept such cakes edible for days in an unrefrigerated pantry. The sponge cake, by contrast, shows the professional method of whisking a hot sugar syrup into whole eggs, a technique that survives in the pâte à bombe and Italian meringue families and that demanded exactly the sort of tireless kitchen labour a hotel brigade could supply.