Home › Our Susan's Opinion of a Kitchen › Corn Starch Cake (II)
Corn Starch Cake (II)
Mrs. Baird.
Whites of six eggs, one cup of butter, two cups of flour, one cup of corn starch, two cups of sugar, one cup of sweet milk, one-half teaspoon of soda, one of cream of tartar.
An ingredient list with no method, no pan and no oven, which was normal in 1876 — the cook was assumed to know how a butter cake is put together. What follows fills in the gaps without changing the proportions.
- Method, since none is givenThis is a standard creamed butter cake: cream the butter and sugar, add the milk alternately with the sifted dry ingredients, then fold in the whites beaten stiff at the end. The whites are the only leavening beyond the soda and cream of tartar, so they should be folded, not stirred.
- Soda and cream of tartarHalf a teaspoon of soda to one of cream of tartar is the classic homemade baking powder ratio, and it works out to roughly two teaspoons of modern double-acting baking powder. Commercial powders were on sale by this date, but many contributors still listed the two components separately. Mixed this way the reaction begins as soon as liquid is added, so get the cake into the oven promptly.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh milk, specified to distinguish it from the sour or buttermilk called for in soda-only cakes. Whole milk is the right substitute.
- Cup sizeA cup of this period is generally taken as the half-pint, about 8 fluid ounces, close enough to a modern cup that no adjustment is needed. If you weigh, about 9 to 10 oz for the two cups of flour.
- Corn starchUnchanged in kind, but note that it replaces a third of the flour by volume and lowers the gluten sharply. The result is a fine, tender, very white crumb — the whole point of the cake. Do not beat the batter hard after the flour goes in.
- OvenNo oven is given; 350F suits this batter. In a greased and floured tube pan expect 45 to 55 minutes; in two 9-inch layers, 25 to 30.
- Yield and the leftover yolksEnough for one large tube cake or two layers, serving ten to twelve. Six yolks are left over; books of this kind commonly print a gold cake, custard or curd nearby that uses them.
The Home Cook Book first appeared in Chicago in the mid-1870s, sold to benefit the Chicago Home for the Friendless; a Canadian edition credited to "the ladies of Toronto and chief cities and towns in Canada" followed — among the earliest and most widely copied charity or community cookbooks in North America. That format explains the shape of this entry: each contributor, here Mrs. Baird, sent in a list of quantities rather than a lesson, and her name stood as the guarantee. Corn starch cakes appear all over such books in the 1870s and 1880s, the fashion generally traced to the spread of commercially refined cornstarch in the middle of the century, which gave household cooks a cheap way to soften wheat flour and produce the fashionably pale, close-grained white cake that had previously depended on expensive fine-milled flour. Recipes of this kind — whites only, cornstarch, and a name attached — anticipate the American white layer cake.