Home › Cake-Making › Old-Fashioned Loaf Cake
Old-Fashioned Loaf Cake
Three pounds (three quarts sifted and well heaped) flour, one and a fourth pounds (a rounded pint of soft) butter, one and threefourths pounds (one quart) sugar, five gills new milk. half pint yeast, three eggs, two pounds raisins, tea-spoon soda, gill of brandy or wine, or a fourth pint of molasses, two tea-spoons cinnamon and two of nutmeg. Scala the milk, 2001 τo 11ovu warm, and the yeasu, then the flour, to which all the butter and half the sugar have been added; then mix together, and let rise until light. It is better to set this sponge over night, and in the morning add the other ingredients (flouring raisins), and let rise again. When light, fill bakingpans and let rise again. Bake in a moderate oven. This recipe makes three large loaves, and is a standard, economical loaf-cake. - Mrs. Ex-Gov. John J. Bagley, Mich.
This is a yeast-raised cake, not a chemically leavened one, and it wants the patience of bread rather than the speed of a butter cake. The quantities are enormous by modern standards; halving or quartering is reasonable if you do not want three large loaves.
- The hinge: this is bread dough logicThe sponge, the overnight rest and the two later rises are what lift the cake. Rushing any of them gives a dense, greasy loaf, since there is no baking powder to rescue it.
- Gills and pintsA gill is half a cup, so five gills of milk is 2 1/2 cups and the gill of brandy is 1/2 cup. The "fourth pint" of molasses is 1/2 cup.
- Weights to volumesThree pounds of flour is roughly 11 cups, 1 1/4 lb butter is five sticks, and 1 3/4 lb sugar is about 4 cups. The parenthetical volumes in the original are rough equivalents: the sugar matches closely, while three sifted and heaped quarts of flour is a little more than three pounds.
- The half pint of yeastThat is a cup of homemade liquid yeast or barm, not anything sold today. Modern instant or active dry yeast is far more concentrated; a batch this size needs on the order of two teaspoons, and you must add back about a cup of liquid to compensate.
- Why soda appears at allAfter a long ferment the sponge turns faintly sour. The teaspoon of soda neutralizes that acidity and gives a little extra lift; it is not the primary leavening.
- Scalding the milkScald, then cool to lukewarm before the yeast goes in, as the recipe directs. Milk much above about 110F starts to stress the yeast, and hotter still will kill it.
- Flouring the raisinsToss the two pounds of raisins in a few spoonfuls of the measured flour before folding them in, or they will settle to the bottom of each pan during the last rise.
- Oven and time'A moderate oven' is usually read today as somewhere around 350F, though no temperature is given. No baking time is given either: loaves this size are likely to want about 1 to 1 1/4 hours, and the tops may need foil once they have coloured.
- YieldThree large loaves, as stated. The sugar and fruit, and the gill of brandy or wine if used, would help them keep, though the recipe says nothing about storage.
Loaf cake of this kind sits at the boundary between bread and cake: a rich, fruited, spiced dough raised with yeast, a common method for large cakes before chemical leavenings were cheap and reliable. Households that kept liquid yeast or barm going in a crock could raise a cake like this on the same starter as the family bread. The attribution of a contribution by the husband's title is characteristic of community cookbooks of the period; John J. Bagley served as governor of Michigan from 1873 to 1877.