No. 3254

Pound Cake

Put twelve eggs and four ounces of sugar in a basin and whip until they become quite light, warming them slightly over the fire. In a large mental vessel lay one pound of butter and three-quarters of a pound of sugar; work with the hands until creamy and light, then add gradually the prepared eggs, beating continuously, and a gill of brandy or rum, and lastly one pound of sifted flour. Butter a pound cake mold, line it with paper and pour in the preparation, having it three-quarters full, then place it in a slow oven to bake for an hour and three-quarters to two hours. Remove from the oven, unmold, and leave stand till cold, then ice it with icing flavored with rum (No. 102). After this is dry slip the cake on a board or dish and decorate with royal icing.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's pound cake is leavened entirely by air, so the two whipping stages are the whole recipe. Everything else is bookkeeping.

"Large mental vessel"A scanning error for metal vessel. Use a wide metal bowl; the mass of butter and sugar is easier to work warm, and metal responds quickly if you need to set it briefly over hot water.
A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces, of brandy or rum. It is a substantial amount of liquid for this batter and should go in slowly, or the emulsion will break.
Slow ovenRoughly 300F, though "slow" covered a range rather than one setting. At about that temperature a cake this size genuinely does need the full hour and three-quarters to two hours; a hotter oven will set and brown the crust long before the centre is done.
Warming the eggsWhipping twelve eggs with four ounces of sugar over gentle heat, to no more than blood warm, is what makes them "quite light." The warmth loosens the whites so the foam builds faster and holds more air. Do not let the bowl get hot enough to set the eggs on the sides.
The hinge: adding the eggsThe egg foam goes into the creamed butter gradually, with continuous beating. Added quickly, or cold into cold butter, it curdles and the cake bakes dense and greasy. If it does begin to separate, warm the outside of the bowl briefly and keep beating.
Folding the flourOne pound of sifted flour goes in last, by hand and lightly. There is no chemical leavening here, so any air knocked out at this stage is lost for good.
Pound cake moldButtered and then lined with paper — parchment now. The recipe's three-quarters full is worth following; the whipped-egg foam gives more lift than the absence of chemical leavening suggests.
IcingNo. 102 is the cross-reference for the icing, which the recipe has thinned and flavoured with rum. The royal icing decoration goes on after the first coat has dried hard.
YieldRoughly four and a half pounds of batter before baking.

A Little History

The name is a plain accounting of the original English formula — a pound each of butter, sugar, eggs and flour — and recipes under that name appear in English cookery books from the eighteenth century, the ratio being easy to remember and easy to scale up or down. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York and author of The Epicurean (1894), keeps the pound of butter and the pound of flour and also keeps a full pound of sugar, but splits it — four ounces whipped with the eggs, twelve ounces creamed with the butter — and beats his twelve eggs to a warm foam first. Placing it among the "Large Cakes for Entremets" tells you how it was used at Delmonico's — not as a homely loaf but as a decorated centrepiece, iced with rum and finished with royal icing piping, to be sliced at the sweet course of a long service menu.