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Corn Starch Cakes
Mrs. Mackie.
One cup of flour, one cup of corn starch, one cup of sugar, half cup of butter, whites of four eggs, half cup of sweet milk, one teaspoonful of cream of tartar, half of soda.
An ingredient list in the compressed style of contributor recipes — the method was assumed to be common knowledge. Here is what the cook of 1876 would have filled in.
- Method, since none is givenCream the butter and sugar, add the milk alternately with the sifted dry ingredients, then fold in the stiffly beaten whites last. Overworking after the whites go in is what turns this from tender to tough.
- Sweet milkPlain fresh whole milk, specified only to distinguish it from sour milk or buttermilk, which would have called for a different leavening balance.
- Cream of tartar and sodaOne teaspoon cream of tartar with half a teaspoon soda is the period stand-in for modern baking powder, on the order of 1 1/2 to 2 teaspoons. Sift both with the flour and cornstarch so the soda does not streak.
- Corn starchUnchanged in substance, but note it is measured by cup here, not spooned as a thickener. Cutting a cup of the flour with cornstarch lowers the protein and gives the fine, close crumb these cakes were prized for — essentially a homemade cake flour.
- Butter quantityHalf a cup is one stick, 4 oz. Use unsalted and add a pinch of salt; the original lists none, and butter of the period was commonly sold salted.
- Pan and ovenThe batter suits an 8-inch square or a loaf pan, or two dozen small cakes in tins. No oven direction is given; bake at 350F, 25 to 30 minutes for layers or small cakes, 45 to 55 for a loaf, until a skewer comes out clean.
- YieldAbout 8 to 10 slices from a loaf, or roughly two dozen small cakes.
- The four yolksThe recipe says nothing about them. They could go the same day into a gold cake, a custard or a salad dressing.
Cakes built on the whites of eggs and a proportion of cornstarch belong to the mid-nineteenth-century vogue for "silver cake," the pale twin to the yolk-rich "gold cake" that used the other half of the eggs. Commercial corn starch had become a cheap pantry staple in American households by the 1850s and 60s — Kingsford's Oswego starch is the brand usually credited with moving it from the laundry shelf to the kitchen — and cooks quickly found that replacing part of the wheat flour with it produced a whiter, finer crumb than the coarse household flour of the day could manage on its own. The Home Cook Book was compiled from recipes contributed by named local women and sold in aid of a charity, which is why entries like this one arrive with a signature and almost no instructions: Mrs. Mackie was writing for neighbors who already knew how a cake was put together.