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Sponge Cake (One pound sugar one of flour)
One pound sugar, one of flour, ten eggs; stir yolks of eggs and sugar till perfectly light; beat whites of eggs and add them with / the flour after beating together lightly; flavor with lemon. Three tea-spoons baking-powder in the flour will add to its lightness, but it never fails without. Bake in a moderate oven. --Mrs. Clara H., Knoxville.
— Mrs. Jennison'S Sponge Cake
One lemon, three gills flour, one pint sugar, eight eggs; beat the yolks of the eggs thoroughly, add the sugar little by little, and the grated rind of the lemon; beat the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth, and add them alternately with the flour, beating very gently and barely long enough to mix well; when part of the flour is in, add the lemon-juice. Bake twenty minutes, in small loaves.
Two versions of the same cake, both built on nothing but eggs, sugar and flour. The measurements come from two different systems — the first by weight, the second by volume — so read each on its own terms.
- The first recipe by weightOne pound of sugar is about 2¼ cups granulated; one pound of flour is roughly 3½ to 4 cups sifted all-purpose. With ten eggs this is a very large cake, enough for a 10-inch tube pan or two 9-inch loaf pans.
- Gills and pintsMrs. Jennison's three gills of flour is 1½ cups, a gill being half a cup. Her pint of sugar is 2 cups. Note that hers is a much leaner cake in flour relative to eggs — it will be softer and more fragile than the first.
- A moderate ovenGenerally taken as around 350F, though period usage ranges from about 325 to 375. For the large first cake, the lower end is safer over the long bake; a tall sponge browns before the center sets if the oven runs hot.
- The hinge is the folding"Beating very gently and barely long enough to mix well" is the whole technique. Once the beaten whites go in, use a spatula and stop the moment no dry flour shows. Overworking here is one of the commonest ways these cakes fail.
- Beating the yolks"Perfectly light" means the yolk-sugar mixture is pale, thick and falls in a ribbon — five to eight minutes with an electric mixer, considerably longer by hand.
- The baking powder is genuinely optionalMrs. Clara H. is right that a properly beaten ten-egg sponge needs no chemical leavening. Three teaspoons in a pound of flour is a modest amount and does no harm, but it also masks a poorly beaten foam rather than fixing it.
- PansGrease nothing, or grease the bottom only and leave the sides bare, so the batter can climb. Cool a tube cake upside down in the pan; sponges collapse if turned out warm.
- TimesTwenty minutes is right for small loaves in the second recipe. The full-size first cake will need 45 to 60 minutes — test with a skewer and by the cake springing back when pressed.
- YieldThe first recipe serves 12 to 16. The second, in small loaves, gives four to six little cakes.
Sponge cake belongs to the era before reliable chemical leavening, when lift came from eggs and arm work alone, and a cook's reputation rested on how long she was willing to beat. The pound-of-this, pound-of-that framing is the same accounting that gave us pound cake, and it survived in American community cookbooks well after scales gave way to cups — which is why this page mixes pounds, gills and pints in the space of a few lines. The Dixie Cook Book, like the Buckeye books it grew out of, gathered contributions under the names of the women who sent them in, so the two recipes here are less alternatives than a small record of local practice: Mrs. Clara H. of Knoxville hedging with baking powder while noting it is not needed, Mrs. Jennison relying on lemon and a lighter hand with the flour. Lemon, both rind and juice, was among the common sponge flavorings of the period.