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Cream Cake (II)
Mrs. Ira Metcalf.
One pint of good cream, two tablespoons of flour, onehalf cup white sugar, whites of two eggs well beaten ; bake in flat tins and frost with soft frosting.
CREAM CAKE No. 2.
Mrs. Ira Metcalf.
One cup of cream, one cup of sugar, two cups of flour, two eggs, one teaspoon of soda.
Two short formulas from the same contributor, printed one after the other. Neither gives a pan size, oven heat or time, which was normal in a subscription cookbook where the readers were assumed to bake several times a week.
- The soda needs an acidOne teaspoon of soda in No. 2 with no cream of tartar, sour milk or molasses. The cream may well have been slightly sour, which would supply the acid, though the recipe does not say so. With modern sweet heavy cream the soda has little to react with and can leave a soapy taste. Use buttermilk-soured cream, or substitute two teaspoons of baking powder and omit the soda.
- What the cream is doingCream is the only fat in either cake; there is no butter. Use heavy cream at 36% or better, not half-and-half, or the cake will be dry and tough.
- The first formula is not a batterThe first formula is barely a batter -- A pint of cream with two tablespoons of flour and two egg whites is very thin for something to be baked in flat tins; it reads more like a cream filling, and the entry as printed carries no title of its own, so text may be missing. If in doubt, treat it as the cream layer for a filled cake.
- Flat tinsThe recipe says only 'flat tins'. Shallow round layer pans of 8 or 9 inches, greased and floured, are a reasonable modern reading.
- OvenThe recipe gives no oven heat or time. As a modern working guide, bake at 350F; layers of this size take about 20 to 25 minutes, until the cake springs back and the edges pull from the tin.
- Missing seasoningNeither version calls for salt or flavouring. A quarter teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of vanilla or a little lemon zest bring it into line with modern expectations without changing the character.
- Soft frostingProbably an uncooked icing of sugar beaten with cream or egg white to a spreading consistency, thin enough to settle smooth, rather than a boiled icing — though the book does not define the term.
- YieldNo. 2 is a small formula: roughly two thin layers, perhaps eight servings.
The Home Cook Book was compiled in Chicago in the 1870s from recipes contributed by named local women and sold to raise money for charity, and it is often cited as an early and influential example of the American community cookbook. "Cream cake" in these collections is used loosely: sometimes a cake enriched with cream in place of butter, sometimes a plain cake split and filled with a cooked cream custard, and the two entries here appear to show both senses sitting side by side under one heading. Cream would have been readily to hand in a household that skimmed its own milk, where butter took churning. The bare, comma-spliced style — no oven heat, no time, no pan — is characteristic of the genre; these were aides-memoire passed between cooks who already knew what a cake batter should look like.