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Centennial Cake
Mrs. George Virtue.
Five eggs, three cups of powdered sugar, one cup of cream or milk, one cup of butter, four cups of flour, the cind and part of juice of one lemon, and a little Cook's Friend baking powder, or use prepared flour.
This is a contributor's ingredient list rather than a method — no pan, no oven, no time. It is a large plain butter cake in the pound-cake family, and the proportions are sound if you supply the missing steps.
- The leavening is the gap"A little Cook's Friend baking powder" is the one measurement you cannot guess from context. For four cups of flour, 4 teaspoons of baking powder is the standard modern rate; less than that and a batter this heavy with butter and sugar will not lift.
- Prepared flourThe alternative offered — "prepared flour" — is the period equivalent of self-rising flour, sold already mixed with leavening. If you use it, add no baking powder. Note that the recipe lists no salt at all, as many cake receipts of the period do not.
- Powdered sugarIn the 1870s this meant granulated sugar ground fine, not today's confectioners' sugar cut with cornstarch. Use ordinary granulated or caster sugar; modern powdered sugar will make the crumb pasty.
- "Cind" is rindA printer's slip for the rind of one lemon, plus part of its juice — a tablespoon or so. The recipe deliberately says "part of": more juice risks curdling the cream and thinning the batter.
- Cook's FriendA Canadian proprietary baking powder of the period, named here as a brand the contributor's readers would recognise. Any modern double-acting baking powder stands in for it directly.
- Method it assumesNo method is given. The usual treatment for a cake of these proportions is to cream the butter and sugar, beat in the eggs, then add flour and milk alternately, with the lemon last.
- OvenA cake of this size wants a moderate oven, 325–350F, in a large tube pan or two loaf pans, roughly 55–70 minutes until a skewer comes out clean. Higher heat will set the crust before the centre cooks.
- YieldFive eggs and four cups of flour make a substantial cake — about 16 servings from a 10-inch tube pan. It keeps well wrapped for several days, which is what such a cake was for.
The Home Cook Book was compiled in Toronto in the 1870s from recipes contributed by named local women — Mrs. George Virtue here — and sold in aid of the Hospital for Sick Children, one of the earliest and most successful Canadian charity cookbooks. The name of this cake most likely alludes to the American centennial of 1876 and the Philadelphia exhibition that marked it: for some years "Centennial" was attached to cakes, cookies, pickles and puddings much as "Jubilee" and "Victory" would be later, with no fixed formula behind it. What sits under the patriotic label is a plain rich butter cake, distinguished only by lemon and by a commercial baking powder named in the text — a sign of the spreading use of branded chemical leaveners in Canadian kitchens.