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Delicate Cake (II)
Mrs. Taylor.
Half cup of butter, one of sugar, one of flour, one-half of corn-starch, one-half of milk, one teaspoon of Cook's Friend baking powder, four eggs, whites alone.
This is a nineteenth-century white cake given in the shorthand of its day: a list of proportions and nothing else. The method is assumed, so most of the work of using it is filling in what Mrs. Taylor left out.
- No method is givenCream the butter and sugar, add the sifted flour, cornstarch and baking powder alternately with the milk, then fold in the stiffly beaten whites last. Folding rather than beating at that stage is the whole point of a delicate cake.
- Cook's Friend baking powderMcLaren's Cook's Friend, a Montreal brand still sold in Canada. Any modern double-acting baking powder can stand in at 1 teaspoon, though period powders were single-acting.
- Cup measuresTreat the cup as 8 fluid ounces: 4 oz butter, 7 oz sugar, about 4.5 oz flour, 2 oz cornstarch, 4 fl oz milk. Period cups varied, and this batter is on the wet side by modern eyes, so hold back a spoonful of milk if it looks slack.
- Flour and cornstarchThe cornstarch is doing what cake flour does now, cutting the gluten for a finer crumb. If you use cake flour throughout, keep the cornstarch anyway; the ratio is what makes it "delicate."
- EggsPeriod eggs generally ran smaller than modern large eggs, so four whites then would likely be closer to three and a half to four large whites now. Spare yolks turn up in period recipes for gold cake, custards and dressings.
- OvenThe recipe gives no baking direction; a moderate oven, around 350F, suits it. The batter is pale and shows scorching, so keep it off the bottom rack.
- Pan and yieldEnough for one 8-inch round layer pan or a small loaf, about 25 to 35 minutes; two thin layers will take 20 to 25. Serves six to eight. Cakes of this type were often finished with a boiled white icing.
The Home Cook Book was compiled in Toronto in 1877 by "ladies of Toronto and chief cities and towns in Canada" in aid of the Hospital for Sick Children, and it is generally credited as the first widely circulated Canadian fundraising cookbook. Recipes came in by name from contributors, which is why this one carries Mrs. Taylor's signature and none of her instructions: many readers in 1877 would presumably have known how a cake was put together, and the value of the contribution was the proportions. "Delicate cake" was one common nineteenth-century name for a white cake made with egg whites alone, the counterpart to the yolk-rich "gold cake" that used up the other half of the eggs. Its appearance here alongside a branded baking powder belongs to a period in which chemical leavening was gradually taking the place of beaten eggs and yeast in ordinary home baking, and in which brand names had become common enough to be written into a recipe without explanation.