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Lady's Cake
One-half cup butter, one and a half of sugar, two of flour, nearly one of sweet milk, half tea-spoon soda, one of cream tartar, whites One-half cup butter, one and a half of sugar, two of flour, nearly of four eggs well beaten; flavor with peach or almond. - Miss M. E. W., Madison.
A plain white butter cake of the kind every nineteenth-century book carried, set down in the telegraphic style of the period. The typesetting has stuttered — the first clause repeats itself midway through — so read past the duplication: the recipe is butter, sugar, flour, milk, leavening, four egg whites, flavoring.
- The full ingredient listHalf a cup butter, one and a half cups sugar, two cups flour, just under one cup sweet milk, half a teaspoon soda, one teaspoon cream of tartar, the whites of four eggs, well beaten. Nothing else is intended; the repeated line is a printing fault.
- Soda and cream of tartarThis is homemade baking powder in the correct 2:1 proportion, and it works out to roughly 2 teaspoons of modern double-acting baking powder. Whichever you use, sift it with the flour and get the batter into the oven promptly — cream of tartar and soda react on contact with the milk and do not wait.
- "Sweet milk"Fresh whole milk, named to distinguish it from the sour milk or buttermilk called for in other recipes of the period. Do not substitute buttermilk here; the acid balance is already set by the cream of tartar.
- Whites onlyFour whites, well beaten and folded in last, are what make this a lady's cake rather than a yellow cake. The yolks would have been used elsewhere, though this recipe says nothing about them.
- The flavoring"Peach" means peach-kernel or peach-leaf extract, which is chemically the same bitter-almond flavor and was often made at home by steeping crushed pits. Use bought almond extract, a scant teaspoon — modern commercial extract has the toxic component removed, homemade kernel infusions do not.
- OvenThe book assumes you know your own stove. Bake at 350F: about 30 minutes in two 8-inch layers, 40 to 45 in a single loaf or tube pan, until a straw comes out clean.
- Method the original omitsCream the butter and sugar thoroughly, then add milk and dry ingredients alternately before folding in the whites. The recipe names no order because a cook of the period would have taken it for granted.
- YieldAbout 10 to 12 slices. Cakes of this kind were often finished with a plain white icing, though this recipe calls for none.
Lady cake belongs to a family of pale, almond-scented white cakes that ran through American cookbooks for most of the nineteenth century. The whiteness was the point — refined sugar, bolted white flour and egg whites alone were expensive proofs of a well-stocked pantry, and the almond note was the standard perfume for such cakes. The sign-off "Miss M. E. W., Madison" is typical of the period's compilations: sources were often credited by initial and town, which gave such books the authority of a whole region's kitchens rather than one author's.