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Clove Cake
Two eggs, one and one-half cups of sugar, one cup of butter, one cup of chopped raisins, onehalf cup of sweet milk, two cups of flour, one tablespoon of cloves, one-half teaspoon of soda.
An ingredient list with no method, no pan and no oven, which is typical of community cookbooks written for cooks who already knew what a butter cake was. The gaps worth filling are the mixing order, the leavening, and the very large quantity of cloves.
- Method, since none is givenCream the butter and sugar, beat in the eggs, then add the flour and milk alternately and fold in the raisins last. Tossing the chopped raisins in a spoonful of the measured flour keeps them from sinking.
- A tablespoon of cloves is a great dealGround cloves are far more potent than most spices and a full tablespoon in a two-cup-flour cake will read as medicinal. One to two teaspoons gives a cake that still tastes emphatically of clove. Spoon measures were not standardised in this period, so the quantity intended may not correspond exactly to a modern 15 ml tablespoon.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh unsoured milk, named to distinguish it from the sour milk or buttermilk that appears constantly in these books.
- The soda has nothing to work onHalf a teaspoon of soda with sweet milk and no molasses, sour milk or cream of tartar will leave a soapy note and little lift. Either use sour milk or buttermilk in place of the sweet milk, or substitute about 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder for the soda.
- A cup of butterEight ounces, or two American sticks, 225 g. Have it soft enough to cream but not melted.
- Oven and panNeither is specified. For a modern oven, 350F suits it: bake in a greased and floured 8-inch square pan or a 9x5 loaf tin, allowing 40 to 50 minutes for the square and 55 to 65 for the loaf, testing with a skewer.
- YieldA single modest cake, about 12 to 16 slices. It keeps well wrapped for several days and the clove mellows overnight.
The Home Cook Book (first published in Toronto in 1877 and reprinted widely in North America) was compiled from contributions by many hands, and its recipes read like notes passed between people who cooked the same way -- ingredients listed, method assumed. Clove cake belongs to the large family of nineteenth-century spice cakes built on butter, sugar, eggs and dried fruit, distinguished from one another mainly by which spice dominates: clove, ginger, cinnamon, or all three together in "spice cake" proper. Cloves had long since come down in price from their early modern peak, when the Dutch monopoly on the Moluccas made them a luxury, and by the 1870s a tin of ground cloves was an ordinary grocery item -- which may explain the free hand with them here. The whimsical section headings are characteristic of the book, which scattered domestic sketches and opinions among its receipts to make it read as something more companionable than a list.