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Snow Cake
Whites of ten eggs beaten to a stiff froth, sift lightly on this one and a half cups fine white or pulverized sugar, stir well, and add cup flour mixed with tea-spoon cream tartar; flavor with lemon or vanilla.-Mrs. Porter, Richmond, Va.
This is an early angel food cake, and like many contributed recipes it assumes the cook already knows how to bake one. No pan, temperature, or time is given, so those are the gaps to fill.
- The hinge: fold, do not stirFold rather than stir — "stir well" probably meant just that, but ten whites hold the entire structure of this cake, and vigorous stirring once the sugar and flour are in will deflate the batter into a flat, rubbery slab.
- Pulverized sugar is not confectioners' sugarIn the 1880s "pulverized" meant sugar ground fine at home or bought as a fine grain — closest today to superfine or caster sugar. Modern confectioners' sugar contains cornstarch and will give a chalkier crumb.
- The flourNineteenth-century "fine white" flour was often softer and lower in protein than modern all-purpose, though milling varied by region and date. Cake flour is the nearer match, and it should be sifted several times with the cream of tartar before folding in.
- Cream of tartar placementThe recipe mixes it into the flour. Current practice adds cream of tartar to the whites near the start of beating, where it stabilizes the foam and helps it hold through the folding — the same quantity, a level teaspoon, applied earlier.
- Egg whitesTen modern large whites run roughly 1 1/4 cups; period eggs were often smaller, so the original volume may have been less. Beat to a stiff froth that holds a peak but still looks glossy; whites whipped dry will break into curds when the flour goes in.
- Oven and panBake in an ungreased tube pan at 325-350F for about 35 to 45 minutes, until the top springs back. Grease defeats the cake — the batter needs to climb the sides.
- CoolingInvert the pan and let the cake cool completely hanging upside down before turning it out. Cooled right side up it settles under its own weight.
- Salt and yieldNo salt is called for; a pinch in the whites sharpens the flavor. One cake of this size serves ten to twelve, and it is best the day it is made.
"Snow cake" was one of several names — along with angel cake and angel's food — for the white cakes that spread through American cookbooks in the 1870s and 1880s, all built on stiffly beaten whites with no butter and no yeast. Their appearance is often attributed to three things arriving in ordinary kitchens at about the same time: cheap finely sifted flour, commercially refined sugar ground fine enough to dissolve in raw foam, and wire egg whisks that made ten whites a possible rather than punishing job — though the connection is inference rather than established fact. Recipes of this type also solved a practical problem in a household that used yolks freely for custards, boiled dressings, and gold cake, since the leftover whites had to go somewhere. Like much of The Dixie Cook Book, this version is a reader contribution, credited to a Richmond cook.