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Imperial Cake
One pound butter and one of sugar beaten to a cream, one pound flour, the grated rind and juice of a lemon, nine eggs, one and a quarter pounds almonds before they are cracked, half pound citron, half pound raisins; beat the yolks light, add sugar and butter, then the whites beaten to a stiff froth, and the flour, reserving a part for the fruit, and, lastly, the nuts blanched, cut fine and mixed with fruit and the rest of the flour. This is very delicious, and will keep for months. Mrs. E. R. May, Minneapolis, Minn.
A pound cake in the literal sense — equal weights of butter, sugar, flour and (roughly) eggs — enriched with almonds and candied fruit. The original gives no pan, no temperature and no time, all of which need supplying.
- Weights, not cupsOne pound each of butter, sugar and flour is about 2 cups butter, 2¼ cups granulated sugar and 3½ cups all-purpose flour. Weigh if you can; the whole structure of the cake depends on the ratio holding.
- Almonds in the shell"One and a quarter pounds almonds before they are cracked" means weighed unshelled. Shelled almond meats run roughly half the shell weight, so use about 10 oz (a scant 2 cups) of blanched almonds.
- No leaveningThere is no soda, saleratus or baking powder here. The lift comes entirely from the creamed butter and the nine whites beaten stiff, so fold the whites in with a light hand and get the cake into the oven promptly.
- OvenBake slow: 300–325°F. A cake this large and heavy wants 2½ to 3 hours, tented with foil once the top has colored. Test with a skewer in the center rather than trusting the clock.
- PansThe batter runs to something over 5 lb — closer to 5½ or 6 lb once nuts and fruit are in. Two 9x5-inch loaf pans or one 10-inch tube pan, lined with parchment and buttered, will hold it. Nineteenth-century cooks often lined the tin with buttered paper for exactly this reason.
- CitronCandied citron — the thick peel of a citrus fruit grown mainly for its rind — is still sold at holiday time and by mail. Candied orange peel is the nearest substitute if you cannot find it; it is sweeter and less resinous.
- Flouring the fruitReserving part of the flour to toss with the nuts and raisins is the point of the method, not a flourish. It keeps the heavy pieces suspended instead of sinking into a band at the bottom.
- Keeping"Will keep for months" is the contributor's claim; a cake this rich does keep well wrapped tight and stored cool, though with no spirits in it months is optimistic. It slices far better on the second or third day, when the crumb has settled.
"Imperial cake" was a common nineteenth-century name for a pound cake pushed to its most lavish form — the plain butter-sugar-flour-egg foundation loaded with almonds and candied peel until it sat somewhere between pound cake and fruit cake. The pound-cake formula itself is much older, an English eighteenth-century convention whose virtue was that it needed no written measurements at all: a pound of each, and the ratio was self-explanatory to a cook with a balance. Names like imperial and queen's marked out the richer variants in an era when eggs, imported almonds and citron were all expensive enough that a cake announced a household's means. This version is signed by a contributor, Mrs. E. R. May of Minneapolis.