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White Pound Cake
One pound sugar, one of flour, half pound butter, whites of sixteen eggs, tea-spoon baking-powder sifted thoroughly with the flour; put in cool oven with gradual increase of heat. For boiled icing for the cake, take three cups sugar boiled in one of water until clear; beat whites of three eggs to very stiff froth, and pour over them the boiling liquid, beating all the time for ten minute; frost while both cake and icing are warm. -Mrs. Ada Estelle Bever, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
A silver cake in the old proportions, with no pan size, no temperature and no baking time given. The quantities scale to a very large cake, so read the yield note before you start.
- The measures in cupsA pound of sugar is 2 cups; a pound of flour is roughly 3 1/3 to 4 cups sifted, so weigh it if you can. Half a pound of butter is 2 sticks, and the whites of sixteen eggs come to about 2 cups (16 fl oz).
- Yield and panThis is roughly 3 1/2 to 3 3/4 lb of batter. It wants a large tube or angel-food pan of 10-inch diameter, or two 9-inch loaf pans; a single loaf tin will overflow. Figure 16 to 20 servings.
- "Cool oven with gradual increase of heat"The instruction suits a wood range, where the cook controlled the rise by feeding the fire. In a modern oven, 325F throughout on a low rack is a reasonable equivalent; a cake this deep is likely to need 1 1/4 to 1 3/4 hours, so test with a skewer at the center.
- The method the recipe assumesNothing here says how to combine, because the method was taken for granted in printed recipes of this type: cream the butter with the sugar until pale, beat the whites to a stiff but not dry froth, then alternate the sifted flour and baking powder with the whites, folding rather than stirring at the end. Overworking after the whites go in tends to make this cake heavy.
- Baking powderOne teaspoon of modern powder is a reasonable reading, and it is a small amount by design; most of the lift is meant to come from the whites. Sift it thoroughly with the flour, as directed, so that it is evenly distributed.
- The icing syrup"Boiled until clear" is the weak point of the instruction; clear means only that the sugar has dissolved, which happens well before the syrup is ready. Boil the 3 cups sugar and 1 cup water to about 238 to 245F on a thermometer, soft to firm ball, then pour it in a thin stream onto the beaten whites with the mixer running.
- Beating and frostingTen minutes of continuous beating by hand is what a stand mixer does in five to seven on medium-high, until the meringue holds a peak and the bowl is no longer hot. Spread it while the cake is still warm as directed -- boiled icing sets fast and turns crumbly once it cools.
- Sixteen yolksSave them. The companion recipe in books of this era is a gold or yolk cake; failing that, they make custard, lemon curd or ice cream, and they keep two days covered in the refrigerator.
Pound cake takes its name from the original English proportions -- a pound each of butter, sugar, flour and eggs -- and by the nineteenth century American cooks were freely adjusting it, as here, where the butter is halved and the eggs are counted rather than weighed. Using whites alone produced what was called white, silver or bride's cake, prized for a pale crumb at a time when a truly white cake meant good refined sugar and enough eggs to spare; the yolks are often said to have gone into a gold cake baked alongside, the two then being served together. The boiled icing that finishes it, hot syrup beaten into egg whites, is generally taken to have been the usual American frosting before commercial confectioners' sugar became cheap, and it holds a gloss that a butter icing cannot. That this contribution to The Dixie Cook Book comes from a subscriber in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is a reminder that such compilations gathered signed recipes by mail from wherever they could, the regional title notwithstanding.