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Southern-Rights Cake
Three eggs, one tea-cup sugar, one of butter, two of flour, scant half cup New Orleans molasses, half a table-spoon each of cinnamon, sifted ginger and allspice, half a tea-spoon soda, half a wineglass brandy, cream, sugar and butter; beat spices and yolks of eggs together, dissolve soda in molasses, whip whites to a froth, and add last, a little at a time, alternating with the flour. (Best baked in small pans and frosted.) - Mrs. S. P. Hill, Ga.
A spiced molasses butter cake leavened by soda and beaten egg whites, written in the compressed shorthand of the 1880s community cookbook. The measurements need translating and the method needs reordering before you start.
- Read the punctuation as a typo"half a wineglass brandy, cream, sugar and butter" is not calling for cream. It is the end of the ingredient list running straight into the first instruction: cream the sugar and butter together.
- TeacupA teacup in American books of this period runs from about 3/4 cup to a full cup, and the book does not say which. Treat it as roughly 1 cup and expect a batter with equal parts sugar, butter and (doubled) flour by volume; if it seems slack, hold back a little of the sugar rather than adding flour.
- WineglassA wineglass in books of this period is usually reckoned at about 2 fluid ounces, so half a wineglass is roughly 2 tablespoons of brandy.
- New Orleans molassesUnsulphured cane molasses of medium strength, not blackstrap. Blackstrap is more bitter and will overwhelm the spices.
- Soda in the molassesThis is the leavening hinge. The half teaspoon of soda is dissolved in the molasses so the acid in the cane syrup starts the reaction; mix it in shortly before baking and get the pans into the oven promptly, because there is no baking powder to give a second lift in the heat.
- Order of workCream butter and sugar, beat the spices with the yolks and add them, stir in the molasses with the dissolved soda and the brandy, then fold in the whipped whites alternately with the flour, a little at a time. Fold, do not beat, once the whites go in.
- Oven and pansThe recipe gives no oven direction; a moderate oven, about 350F, suits it. In small pans or a muffin tin, 18 to 25 minutes; in a single 8-inch layer, 30 to 35. The molasses browns the surface early, so judge by a clean skewer rather than by colour.
- Yield and frostingAbout two dozen small cakes, or two thin 8-inch layers. The period frosting for this would be a plain boiled or confectioners'-sugar icing; a caramel or brown-sugar icing suits the spice better than anything with chocolate in it.
The Dixie Cook Book belongs to the family of large subscription compilations that grew out of Buckeye Cookery, rebadged for a Southern market and filled out with contributions credited by name and state, as this one is to Mrs. S. P. Hill of Georgia. Cakes named for political sentiments were a fixture of nineteenth-century American baking, and "Southern Rights" was the slogan of the states'-rights cause before and after the Civil War, so the title tells you rather more about the contributor's household than about the batter. The cake itself is a familiar type: a creamed butter cake enriched with cane molasses and the standard trio of cinnamon, ginger and allspice, lifted by soda reacting with the molasses and by whipped whites folded in at the end, from the years before baking powder had fully displaced saleratus in home kitchens. The instruction to bake it small and frost it points to tea-table service rather than dessert.