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Breakfast Cake
Two table-spoons sugar, two of butter, two eggs, one cup milk, one (scanty) quart flour, one tea-spoon soda, two of cream tartar; bake twenty minutes in a quick oven. -Mrs. Emily L. Burnham, South Norwalk Conn.
A plain soda cake of the biscuit-dough school, leavened with the old soda-and-cream-of-tartar pair rather than commercial baking powder. It comes together in a few minutes, and everything depends on speed once the acid meets the alkali.
- Work fast once mixedCream of tartar reacts with soda the instant liquid is added and does not hold a second rise. Have the pan greased and the oven hot before you combine wet and dry, and get it in immediately.
- A quick ovenGenerally reckoned somewhere around 400-450F. Twenty minutes at that heat suits a shallow cake about an inch thick; a deeper pan will need longer and a lower setting.
- A scanty quart of flourA quart of flour measures roughly 4 cups, so "scanty" means about 3 1/2 to 3 3/4 cups. That is a great deal of flour for one cup of milk and two eggs, and the result is a stiff dough closer to a thick biscuit or scone than a batter.
- Judge the dough, not the cupNineteenth-century flour was measured by volume and can behave differently from modern all-purpose. If the mass will not come together as a soft, just-workable dough, add milk a spoonful at a time.
- The leaveningOne teaspoon soda to two of cream of tartar is the classic 1:2 ratio that makes homemade baking powder. If you substitute, use about 4 teaspoons of modern double-acting baking powder and omit both.
- Sift the dry things togetherSoda and cream of tartar must be distributed evenly through that much flour or the cake bakes with bitter yellow streaks. Sift them with the flour two or three times before adding anything wet.
- Pan and yieldNo vessel is named. A greased 8- or 9-inch square pan, or a round tin, patted level, would suit; cut into squares. Serve warm.
"Breakfast and tea cakes" in a book like this means quick breads eaten hot from the pan, not iced confections: the American breakfast table of the 1870s and 1880s ran on soda-raised cakes, muffins and biscuit. Cream of tartar paired with saleratus or soda was the standard chemical leavening of the period, sold separately and combined by the cook; packaged baking powder existed by then. Subscription cookbooks of the day were assembled from readers' contributions with name and town attached, which is why a recipe from South Norwalk, Connecticut sits comfortably in a volume trading on Southern cookery.