No. 3242

Jamaica Cake

Gateau a la Jamaique

Beat up a pound of sugar with fourteen egg-yolks, so as to have it frothy, then add slowly twelve beaten-up whites and at the same time one pound of sifted rice flour, then a pound of melted butter, also pouring it in slowly with some grated lemon peel, a grain of salt, six ounces of candied orange peels cut in small pieces and six ounces of small raisins. Bake this preparation in a slack oven after placing it in a buttered and floured spiral mold; when the cake is unmolded and cold apricot the surface and glaze with rum icing (No. 102). Dress on a napkin and decorate with whipped cream.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A rice-flour pound cake, leavened entirely by beaten eggs, finished with apricot glaze and rum icing. Two things decide whether it works: the air you beat into the eggs and an oven low enough not to set the crust before the crumb has risen.

The hinge: no chemical leavenThere is no baking powder here, and rice flour has no gluten to trap gas. All the lift comes from the sugar-and-yolk foam plus the beaten whites, so fold the whites and flour alternately and stop the moment they are combined.
Melted butter goes in last, and warmMelted butter goes in after the whites and flour, and only just warm -- A pound of melted butter will collapse a whites-based batter if it is hot or if it is dumped in. Let it cool to barely tepid and pour it down the side of the bowl in a thin stream while folding; the peel and raisins follow it, as the recipe has them.
"Slack oven"Usually glossed at around 300-325F. At this weight expect upwards of 60-75 minutes in a tube mold, possibly longer; a skewer should come out clean and the cake should be shrinking slightly from the pan.
Rice flourUse fine white rice flour, not glutinous (sweet) rice flour, which is a different starch and will go gummy. Sift it as directed; rice flour clumps and the lumps do not dissolve in a foam batter.
Spiral moldA fluted turban or kugelhopf mold, of the sort the modern bundt pan descends from. This is a large quantity of batter, so use a correspondingly large mold rather than risk overflow. Butter and flour it thoroughly, including every flute.
Egg counts and "a grain of salt"Fourteen yolks to twelve whites may well be intentional rather than a slip: the extra yolks enrich a flour that has no gluten of its own. Nineteenth-century eggs tended to run smaller than today's large eggs, so weigh if you can. A grain of salt means little more than a pinch.
Small raisinsCurrants or small sultanas. Toss them and the candied peel in a spoonful of the rice flour so they do not sink through the loose batter.
"Apricot the surface"A verb in this book: warm apricot jam, sieve it, and brush the cold cake with a thin coat. It seals crumbs so the rum icing sits clean and glossy rather than dragging.
Rum icingRanhofer's No. 102 is cross-referenced here as a rum icing; icings of this period were sugar-based and let down with spirit, not a modern buttercream. Confectioners' sugar beaten with dark rum and a little water to a pourable ribbon gives a similar effect.
YieldA full pound each of sugar, flour and butter makes a substantial cake, sixteen servings or more. It keeps several days well wrapped.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it sits among the entremets cakes served as a sweet course rather than at tea. The name is often taken to refer not to any Caribbean baking tradition but to the rum in the icing, on the assumption s that a cake might be labelled after its most conspicuous colonial ingredient, so that a rum finish made it a la Jamaique much as coffee made a dish a la Moka — though this is inference rather than documented fact. The rice flour is the more telling detail. Ground rice was a fashionable fine-pastry flour through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, valued for the short, sandy, close crumb it gives, and it appears in Ranhofer alongside sponge cakes built on the same technique of a long-beaten yolk-and-sugar foam. Cakes of this kind, unmolded from a fluted spiral form, glazed, set on a folded napkin and banked with whipped cream, were dressed for the table as much as they were baked for it.