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Cup Cake
Three cups sugar, one of butter, six of flour, two-thirds pint sour cream, seven eggs (leaving out the whites of two for icing), one even tea-spoon soda in the cream, tea-spoon soda in the flour, one of cream tartar, and one of lemon or vanilla. Bake in pans one inch deep, and when done spread one with icing, and lay the other on top of it, allowing two layers for each cake. -Mrs. Dr. Thompson.
This is "cup cake" in the older sense — a cake measured out in cups rather than weighed — and the proportions make a very large batch, enough for two or three two-layer cakes. Read the leavening line carefully before you start.
- Two separate additions of sodaOne level teaspoon of soda goes into the sour cream, where it reacts with the cream's acidity; a second teaspoon is sifted into the flour along with the teaspoon of cream of tartar, which was the period's homemade baking powder. Do not consolidate them — the split is deliberate, and 2 teaspoons total across 6 cups of flour is reasonable.
- Two-thirds pint sour creamThat is about 1 1/3 cups. Use full-fat cultured sour cream; modern light or stabilized versions have less acid and more gum, and they will not carry the soda as cleanly. Buttermilk at the same volume works if you accept a slightly leaner crumb.
- FlourSix cups of a soft Southern flour, not bread flour. All-purpose is workable; a low-protein flour such as White Lily gives the tender crumb this recipe assumes. Spoon and level rather than scooping, since a packed cup can add several ounces across six of them.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives none. Thin one-inch layers want 350F, 18 to 25 minutes, until the top springs back and a tester comes out clean. Anything hotter will dome and crack the surfaces you need flat for stacking.
- Pans one inch deepEight- or nine-inch round layer pans, filled shallow. Grease and flour, or line with parchment. The batch is large enough for several such layers, hence "two layers for each cake."
- The reserved whitesTwo whites are held back for the icing, which the recipe assumes you know how to make: whites beaten with sifted sugar into a plain uncooked frosting. If the cake is for anyone who should avoid raw egg, use pasteurized whites or a cooked boiled icing instead.
- Creaming matters more than it looksThree cups sugar to one of butter is a high ratio, and creaming contributes lift alongside the soda. Cream the butter and sugar until visibly pale and light, then add the eggs one at a time, or the layers will bake heavy.
- Scaling downThirds divide cleanly: one cup sugar, one-third cup butter, two cups flour, scant half cup sour cream, two eggs, one-third teaspoon each of the leavenings. That gives two thin layers — one cake.
"Cup cake" in nineteenth-century American books almost never means the small paper-cupped cake of today; it means a cake built on cup measures rather than the pound-for-pound scale of a pound cake, and the older 1-2-3-4 formula (one butter, two sugar, three flour, four eggs) is its close relation. The shift from weighing to measuring by volume was a distinctly American habit, often said to be tied to households that owned a set of tin cups more reliably than a balance, though this is a commonly repeated account rather than documented practice. That this one is attributed to a contributor — Mrs. Dr. Thompson, styled by her husband's profession, as was the convention — is typical of The Dixie Cook-Book, a commercially compiled volume that drew heavily on earlier Buckeye and Practical Housekeeping material and credited the local women whose recipes it printed. The recipe's silences are equally of its period: no oven temperature, no baking time, and no icing method, because a cook working a wood range judged heat by hand and was expected to know what an egg-white icing was.