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Tea Cake
One quart flour, one cup sour milk, one tea-spoon soda, one-half pound lard, one-half pound chopped raisins or currants; roll two inches thick and bake in a quick oven; split open, butter, and eat while hot.-Mrs. Canby
A rich currant biscuit dough rather than a cake — no sugar, no eggs, and enough lard to make it closer to a shortcake. The two-inch thickness is not a misprint, and it is what makes the split-and-butter finish work.
- A quart of flourFlour was measured by volume: a quart is 4 cups, roughly 18 oz of modern all-purpose flour. Spoon it into the cup rather than scooping, or the dough will come out dry.
- Half a pound of lardThat is 1 cup, or 2 sticks' worth — cut in cold, as for pastry, not creamed. Chilled shortening or butter behaves much the same, though butter adds water and browns faster.
- Sour milk and sodaSour milk here means naturally clabbered raw milk; cultured buttermilk is the direct substitute. A teaspoon of soda to a single cup of milk is a generous proportion by the usual reckoning of about half a teaspoon per cup, but no baking powder is needed alongside it.
- Add saltThe recipe gives none, though salted butter would have gone on afterwards. A teaspoon of salt in the flour is worth adding.
- Quick ovenRoughly 400-425F. At two inches thick the cakes need 20-25 minutes; test with a skewer in the centre rather than going by colour, since the tops brown well before the middle sets.
- Two inches thickRoll the whole slab to that depth and cut rounds or squares from it. Rolling thinner gives ordinary biscuits and loses the point of the dish, which is a substantial crumb to split and butter.
- The raisinsChopping them, as instructed, keeps them from tearing the soft dough and distributes them evenly. Dried currants need no chopping.
- Yield and timingPerhaps eight to ten three-inch cakes at that depth. They are meant to be eaten straight from the oven, and with no sugar or egg they are best the same day.
In Southern usage "tea cake" covered a wide range of things served with the evening tea, from thin sugar cookies to unsweetened biscuit doughs enriched with fat and fruit like this one. Chemically leavened doughs required no waiting on yeast and could be got into a hot stove oven at short notice. Sour milk was not a flavouring choice but a fact of a kitchen without refrigeration: milk soured on its own within a day or two, and the acid was put to work raising bread with soda. The Dixie Cook-Book, like many compilations of the 1880s and after, credits individual contributors by name ereses eads as a family formula written down in the shorthand of someone who had made it many times and did not need to be told to add salt.