No. 3226

Angel Cake

Gateau des Anges

Pour twenty egg-whites into a basin and whip them till quite firm; at once add ten ounces of sugar, part of it flavored with vanilla (No. 3165), and continue whipping the whole until quite smooth, then add half a pound of flour into which has been mixed half a teaspoonful of cream of tartar and sifted several times through a sieve; mix all together lightly till smooth. With this preparation fill some angel cake molds, eight to nine inches in diameter, three-quarters full; these should be quite dry, without any buttering. Push the cakes into a very slack oven to cook for forty to fifty minutes, then take them out and keep them in their molds for two hours; now pass a small kitchen knife between the pan and the cake, knock the edges of the former gently on the table to detach the cake and turn it on a grate; pare the tops very straight, ice with royal icing (No. 101) and dress on a lace-paper-covered board or dish; after the icing is dry decorate with more of the royal icing.

← No. 3225 Almond Cake Large Cakes for Entremets No. 3227 Baba Syruped or Iced →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's angel cake is built on the same principles as the modern version, but the proportions and the oven direction both need translating before you start.

Scale it downTwenty egg whites is roughly 2 1/2 cups (600 ml) and fills two 9-inch tube pans. A quarter batch — five whites, 2 1/2 oz sugar, 2 oz flour — fits a single small pan if you want to test the method first.
Weigh, do not scoopTen ounces of sugar and half a pound of flour are weights, not cups. Use 285 g sugar and 225 g flour; a cup-based guess here will make the cake heavy.
The flourNineteenth-century pastry flour was softer than modern all-purpose. Cake flour gives the closest result, and the repeated sifting the recipe calls for is not decoration — it aerates the flour so it can be folded in without deflating the whites.
Cream of tartarHalf a teaspoon for twenty whites is well below current practice, which runs to about 1/8 teaspoon per white. The acid stabilises the foam and whitens the crumb; increasing it is the single easiest improvement to this formula.
Sugar timingThe instruction to add all the sugar "at once" once the whites are firm is the weak point. Whipping the whites to soft peaks and then adding the sugar gradually gives a more stable meringue that will not weep in the oven.
A very slack ovenUsually taken to mean somewhere around 300° the cool end of the range (about 150°C); 325°F is safer in a modern oven with even heat. Forty to fifty minutes is right for the eight- to nine-inch pan the recipe specifies — the cake is done when the top springs back and a skewer comes out clean.
Dry, unbuttered moldsThis is the hinge. An angel cake climbs by gripping the sides of the pan; any fat, including residue from a nonstick coating, and it will slump. Use a plain aluminium tube pan and no lining.
CoolingTwo hours in the mold is correct, but invert the pan while it cools so the crumb hangs rather than compresses under its own weight.
Royal icingIcing No. 101 is raw egg white beaten with powdered sugar. It sets hard and dry, but if you are serving anyone vulnerable, use pasteurised whites or meringue powder.

A Little History

Angel cake is generally taken to be an American invention that Ranhofer, writing for Delmonico's in 1894, dressed in a French name — gâteau des anges. It belongs to the second half of the nineteenth century for practical reasons: it needs cheap refined white sugar, finely milled white flour, chemically pure cream of tartar, and a convenient way of whipping twenty egg whites, which rotary eggbeaters, patented from the 1850s onward, made easier. The tall ring pan with a hollow centre that he calls an "angel cake mold" is closely associated with the cake, and its tube is usually explained as conducting heat into the middle of a batter too delicate to survive a long bake. The name is generally taken as a comment on the cake's whiteness and near-weightlessness, and it was later set opposite devil's food cake. Its place here, among the large cakes for entremets, marks it as a course in itself rather than a homely dessert. The fat-free crumb would also have used up the whites left over from a kitchen that went through egg yolks in custards, sauces and ices.