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Cream Sponge Cake
Mrs. John Thomas.
One cup sugar, one-half cup cream, two eggs, one cup flour, one-half teaspoon cream tartar, one-fourth soda, flavour with a few drops of lemon essence.
A contributor's recipe in the shorthand of the 1870s: a list of quantities with no method, no pan and no oven. Everything a modern baker needs has to be inferred from the ratios, which are those of a small one-layer cake.
- What the amounts add up toThis is a single thin layer or one small loaf, not a tall celebration cake. An 8-inch round pan, greased and floured, is about right; expect 8 modest slices.
- Cream tartar and sodaHalf a teaspoon of cream of tartar with a quarter teaspoon of soda is the standard 2:1 acid-to-alkali pairing that stood in for commercial baking powder. Sift both with the flour so the soda is evenly dispersed; once wetted it starts working, so get the batter into the pan promptly.
- "One-fourth soda"The unit is dropped, as it often is in these books. Read it as a quarter teaspoon of baking soda, matching the half teaspoon of cream of tartar above it.
- The creamIn the 1870s this meant cream skimmed from unhomogenized milk, variable in richness though often broadly in the range of today's light cream. Half-and-half or light cream is the closest easy substitute; heavy cream makes a denser, richer crumb.
- FlourPeriod household flours varied, so weigh the cup at about 120 g, or use cake flour, and fold it in rather than beating it, or the cake toughens.
- Method the recipe assumesBeat the eggs with the sugar until pale and thick enough to ribbon, stir in the cream, then fold in the sifted flour with the cream of tartar and soda. The eggs are doing most of the lifting, so do not deflate them.
- OvenThe recipe specifies no oven heat; 350F is a reasonable modern equivalent. A layer of this depth should be done in 20 to 25 minutes, when the top springs back and a skewer comes out clean.
- Lemon essenceThis is lemon extract. Take "a few drops" more or less literally, since modern commercial extracts are potent; err on the low side.
The Home Cook Book was assembled in Chicago in the 1870s from recipes contributed by named local women and sold to benefit a charitable home, which is why so many entries read like a note passed across a fence: quantities only, method understood between cooks who already knew how to make cake. A "cream sponge" is not a true sponge, since a genuine sponge carries no added fat and rises on eggs alone; the cream here buys tenderness at the cost of some of that lift, which is why the cream of tartar and soda are present as insurance. That pairing suits the period, when many cooks still bought the two chemicals separately and measured the acid against the alkali themselves, though prepared baking powders were already on the market by the 1860s.