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Composition Cake
Mrs. H. Baird.
Five cups of flour, two cups of butter, three of sugar, one of milk, five eggs, one teaspoon of soda, two of cream of tartar, fruit as you please, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves to taste.
A cup-measured cake of the old New England type, given as a list of proportions with no method and no oven. Everything else is left to the cook, so the notes below fill in what the original assumes you already know.
- Method, which is omitted entirelyCream the butter and sugar until pale and light, beat in the eggs one at a time, then add the flour (sifted with the cream of tartar and spices) alternately with the milk, the soda dissolved in a little of the milk. Fold in the fruit last, tossed in a spoonful of the measured flour.
- The leavening is homemade baking powderOne teaspoon soda plus two of cream of tartar is the period substitute for about four teaspoons of baking powder. Cream of tartar is a fast-acting acid, so get the batter into the pans and into the oven without delay.
- Butter measureTwo cups of butter is one pound, four sticks. Nineteenth-century recipes often meant butter packed solid into the cup, so weigh it rather than trying to press it in.
- Cup sizeCup measures of the period varied, and a teacup was often smaller than the half-pint cup that later became standard; for this proportional style of cake the modern 8 oz cup is close enough. Five cups of flour is then roughly 1 lb 5 oz; spoon it into the cup and level rather than scooping.
- OvenBake at 325-350F. This is a heavy, high-butter batter and a hot oven will set the crust before the centre rises.
- Pans and timeThe quantity is large, something over 5 lb of batter before the fruit goes in. Two 9-inch tube pans or three 9x5 loaf tins, lined and buttered, will take 55-75 minutes; test with a skewer at the deepest point.
- "Fruit as you please"Two to three cups of raisins, currants or chopped candied peel suits this quantity. Much beyond that and the batter will not carry it and the fruit sinks.
- SpicesFor five cups of flour, start at two teaspoons cinnamon, one of nutmeg and half a teaspoon of cloves. Nutmeg was commonly bought whole and grated fresh in this period.
- KeepingRich, spiced and fruited, it keeps a week wrapped closely and improves after a day. Yields about 24 generous slices.
Composition cake belongs to the family of American recipes built on whole cups rather than weights, of which the best-known survivor is the 1-2-3-4 cake. The name is usually taken to refer to its being composed of set proportions, a formula a cook could carry in her head and scale up or down without scales, which mattered in kitchens where a balance was a luxury and a teacup was on every shelf. The soda-and-cream-of-tartar pairing is consistent with the decades before commercial baking powder became widely available in the domestic market, though cooks went on mixing their own acid and alkali well after that. Recipes in community cookbooks of this kind are commonly credited to the contributor by name and assume she and her readers share a method, which is why nothing here tells you to cream the butter or how hot to build the fire.