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Delicate Cake (III)
Mrs. J. H. Mead.
The whites of twelve eggs, three-quarters of a pound of butter, three-quarters of a pound of sugar, one pound butter, three -quarters of a pound of sugar, one pound of flour, two tablespoonsful of milk, two tablespoonsful Cook's Friend.
Beat the eggs to a froth, beat butter and sugar to a cream; mix the baking powder well with the flour, and add milk. If half corn starch is used in place of flour it will be an improvement, and if for jelly cakes bake in square tins, and when cold cut into slices; they are delicious filled with lemon honey in place of jelly.
A white cake in the silver-cake tradition, using twelve egg whites and no leavening beyond baking powder. The printed ingredient list has been garbled in typesetting, so the first decision is what the butter and sugar quantities actually are.
- The duplicated lineThe text reads "three-quarters of a pound of butter, three-quarters of a pound of sugar, one pound butter, three-quarters of a pound of sugar" — a compositor's repetition. Read it as 3/4 lb (12 oz) butter and 3/4 lb (about 1 2/3 cups) sugar to 1 lb flour, which gives a normal rich pound-cake ratio; 1 lb butter to 12 oz sugar would not.
- Cook's FriendA Canadian brand of baking powder, in circulation when this book was compiled. Two tablespoons for a pound of flour is on the generous side by modern standards — period powders were single-acting and less reliable in strength. Four teaspoons of modern baking powder is closer to the mark, and even that is generous for a batter carrying twelve whipped whites.
- Twelve whitesThe whites of twelve period eggs run to roughly 1 1/3 to 1 1/2 cups, or about eleven to twelve large eggs today. "Beat to a froth" here means soft, not stiff, peaks; whites beaten dry will refuse to fold into so stiff a butter-sugar base.
- Order of workThe instructions stop before the assembly. Cream butter and sugar, add the flour and baking powder alternately with the two tablespoons of milk, then fold the whites in last in three additions. The batter is thick, so lighten it with a spoonful of the whites before folding in the rest.
- Half corn starchReplacing 8 oz of the flour with cornstarch lowers the protein and gives a finer, more tender crumb — the same principle as modern cake flour. Sift the two together at least twice or the cornstarch will streak.
- Oven and timeNo temperature or time is given. A moderate oven, 325–350F, is right for a batter this rich; expect roughly 55–70 minutes in a tube or loaf pan, or 20–25 minutes for the shallow square tins used for jelly cake.
- Lemon honeyPeriod Canadian and British usage for lemon curd — eggs, sugar, butter and lemon juice cooked to a thick cream. Any modern lemon curd recipe stands in directly.
- YieldA pound of flour and 3/4 lb of butter make a large cake: one 10-inch tube pan, two 9-inch loaves, or three shallow squares for layering. Twelve to sixteen servings.
The Home Cook Book (Toronto, 1877) was compiled "by ladies of Toronto and chief cities and towns in Canada" and sold to benefit the Hospital for Sick Children, making it one of the earliest Canadian community fundraising cookbooks — a genre in which recipes arrive credited to their donors, as this one is to Mrs. J. H. Mead. The dish belongs to the family of white or "delicate" cakes that flourished once cheap chemical leaveners and reliably beaten whites made a pale, fine-grained crumb achievable at home; the yolks left over went into gold cake, custard or lemon honey, which may be why the two so often seem to appear near each other in the same books. The reference to Cook's Friend is a small commercial fingerprint, a named brand surfacing in a home recipe.